Chapters 4,5 of 8

JoBurg and Kruger-

We arrived to Joburg at 1pm after a 20 hour bus ride through the night. I am the guy who can not sleep on busses, cars, and planes, but this bus, the seats reclined almost to 180 degrees and I slept like a champ on the bus. We were the only western travelers on the bus, but were treated like we were a regular on the bus.

Once we arrived in JoBurg, we read several different places that outside the bus/train station was very dangerous, and as we arrived, these stories appeared to be correct. We made sure we had a ride from our Hostel and the guy picked us up right on time.

We stayed outside the town near the airport as we needed to rent a car for Kruger and for a bit of safety. The hostel we stayed at outside of town was basically an older couples house with some bunk beds and an outside bar. The couple were incredibly friendly and helpful. There was only an italian couple staying there which were very nice. We went out to get Chinese food the first night which was incredibly cheap and good. We departed dinner about 8:15 at night to find every store closed down the main road. As we were looking for a bottle of wine to enjoy the rest of the night, we did not find it.

The next morning we picked up our rental from the airport. SA Drives on the other side of the road (damn brits). Mark drove and was use to the driving from our Cape Town bikes. On our way we hit a huge traffic jam. It was a complete police shut down of the road pulling over every driver. There were about 12 spots where cars pulled in where you were basically interrogated by the police. They saw we had just a Texas drivers license (which is perfectly fine internationally as long as its not for an extended period of time). The cop said otherwise, saying it was illegal and we had to pay a R500 'fine' (aka bribe). This made SA put a bit of a sour taste in our mouths which is unfortunate because as Mark said later, SA was a 99 now its a 96.

We arrived to Kruger Park backpackers and set up in our bunks and went into town to a local grocery store and got supplies. As we came back we were again one of the only people there. The workers told us as it was Easter weekend we should get to the gate of Kruger by 5:15am, because the park opened at 6am. We got there at 5:20 and were about 10th in line.

We entered the park and right away we saw four or five giraffes eating. As we drove through the park for two days, the roads were nice, plenty empty, and plenty of animals. So many Impalas it was ridiculous. We did not see any Lions though. We did see plenty of elephants, zebras, hogs, hippos, rhinos, impalas, giraffes, etc. We also saw three cheetahs eating which was awesome.

As our first day was coming to a close with only a little day light left we stopped along the side of the road and in a quick instance we saw 3 different groups of animals all take off in a sprint in the same directions. We could not see the animal chasing them, but seeing them all take off was quite the awesome site.

As we returned back to JoBurg, we had our flight ready to go to Livingstone/Victoria Falls.

Stay tuned-

Stay Classy America.