- 7 MORE DAYS TILL WE GET HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wednesday 25th June 2008This morning we got up and went to Kruger national park for a game drive; it was just down the road from our hotel. We saw giraffe, impala, crocodile, monkeys, elephants, kudu (Big antelope), zebras and we saw 5 lions sitting down next to a dead giraffe that they killed yesterday, they had already eaten half of it! We didn’t get to take a good pic of it though because they were behind a tree. Dad let me drive our car for about 10kms (on his lap) on the way home. We came home in the afternoon and played ping-pong. We were the only ones in the restaurant for dinner because everyone went to the expensive buffet but the manager came and said we were half and hour late for the a la carte, our only options were the buffet or room service so we did room service and chilled out. See you all soon! Elijah
- 8 MORE DAYS TILL WE GET HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tuesday 24th June 2008
Headed off to check into the Protea Hotel at one of the gates to Kruger National Park about 100kms north of Nelspruit and then went to visit the Moholoholo animal rehabilitation centre. We walked around the enclosures with our guide and he explained how all the animals got there. First he showed us all the birds, most of them were hit by a car or poisoned by the farmers to keep them from eating their crops. When we came to the vulture cages people were able to feed them! Dad had a go; he put on this big heavy glove thing so the claws of the vulture wouldn’t dig in. We also saw the second largest eagle in Africa which is also the deadliest because its claws are so long. One of the guides at the Moholoholo animal rehabilitation centre was holding the eagle in front of everyone and he got his eye gouged out by the eagle’s claw!!!!!!! They’ve also found CHILDRENS BONES in nests out in the wild and one guy on T.V was being interviewed with this species sitting on his hand and the eagle gave the man a little love bite on his wrist and broke 4 bones in his hand! Our guide said no one dares to go in there to feed it; they just throw food through the cage. I think the guide said someone bought the eagle to them because they hit it with a car and it was slowly dying, but the rehabilitation centre saved it. Then we went on to the mammals! There was a huge Lion who was bought to the rehabilitation centre because he was raised by humans in the circus and they could not put him back in the wild. His name was ‘Big boy’ because just his shoulders came up to my chest! His mane was beautiful, a goldy-browny, blackish colour, he was so pretty. We also saw leopards, cheetahs and hyenas. One of the hyenas had a sensitive foot and every time the guide touched it he would laugh, it was cool. On the way out we got to quickly see the...... HONEY BADGER, the most feared animal in Africa. (It bights the genitals off a male animal and watches it bleed to death!) We have wanted to see one of these all through our safari and we finally got to! The little one was so cute he kept trying to get attention, he was standing on his back legs and spinning around then falling over, we couldn’t stop laughing! It was getting dark so we went home, ate at ‘maxies’ and came back to bed! Maddi xx - 9 MORE DAYS TILL WE GET HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday & Monday 22nd&23rd June 2008
Drove to Nelspruit through the Kingdom of Swaziland which was pretty cool since this is the second kingdom in 2 days that we’ve been in. The people and scenery of Swaziland are beautiful, although when we asked for any points of clarification re meals or directions it was clear that their English is not as good as you would think at first guess. They just stare at you confused and make a bunch of clicking sounds. Evidently they only have a very basic working knowledge of English, which of course is a whole lot better than my working knowledge of Xosa (pronounced by making a tsk sound like Skippy the bush kangaroo, followed immediately by “or-za”), which seems to be the most common dialect we’ve come across. Any hoo, we learnt you don’t ask “what kind of teas do you have?” or “what should we see in Swaziland?” So we made it to Nelspruit having managed to gather NO info on Swaziland ... until we were literally at the border back into South Africa (pronounced “Suth Efrica”) where a very helpful immigrations officer told us everything we’d just missed. Guess we’ll have to come back someday (gave the guy a bunch of Mahalia’s Ozzy coins for his collection). After arriving in Nelspruit, we made our way to Gareth’s brother’s place (Neil) and enjoyed a lovely meal of impala which he had just shot with a 100 year old gun that dates back to the Boer War and a few red wines that date back to when we bought them at the winery on our tour just before we hit Cape Town.
Drove to Nelspruit through the Kingdom of Swaziland which was pretty cool since this is the second kingdom in 2 days that we’ve been in. The people and scenery of Swaziland are beautiful, although when we asked for any points of clarification re meals or directions it was clear that their English is not as good as you would think at first guess. They just stare at you confused and make a bunch of clicking sounds. Evidently they only have a very basic working knowledge of English, which of course is a whole lot better than my working knowledge of Xosa (pronounced by making a tsk sound like Skippy the bush kangaroo, followed immediately by “or-za”), which seems to be the most common dialect we’ve come across. Any hoo, we learnt you don’t ask “what kind of teas do you have?” or “what should we see in Swaziland?” So we made it to Nelspruit having managed to gather NO info on Swaziland ... until we were literally at the border back into South Africa (pronounced “Suth Efrica”) where a very helpful immigrations officer told us everything we’d just missed. Guess we’ll have to come back someday (gave the guy a bunch of Mahalia’s Ozzy coins for his collection). After arriving in Nelspruit, we made our way to Gareth’s brother’s place (Neil) and enjoyed a lovely meal of impala which he had just shot with a 100 year old gun that dates back to the Boer War and a few red wines that date back to when we bought them at the winery on our tour just before we hit Cape Town.
Saturday 21st June 2008
We had planned to head north today but the Drakensberg is so awesome in the true sense of the word, that when I saw a brochure on a day trip up the Sani Pass, we decided to stay another day and brave the toughest route into the kingdom of Lesotho (pronounced “Lesutu”). It was absolutely breathtaking as we climbed to 2874m above sea level negotiating multiple hairpin turns in the snow & ice, through a dramatic pass with sheer rocky mountains on either side, to the border post of Lesotho. We made a quick stop at the Sani Pass Pub to order our lunch so that they could prepare it while we went and visited an authentic Lesotho village a few kms away. Here we watched their sheep gnawing in icy stubble, sat in one of their huts, ate their version of damper (should’ve got the recipe – it was gooood!) and got a history lesson on the Kingdom of Lesotho. Schoolwork for today... tick. Back to the Pub (the highest pub in Africa) for lunch and a hot choc with Amarula, where we met 2 beautiful Christian couples from Cape Town on holiday (Pastors and friends) who prayed for us in the carpark before we had to leave and head back down the hair-raising road to Underberg for the night at the Himeville Arms. Great day! Pete
We had planned to head north today but the Drakensberg is so awesome in the true sense of the word, that when I saw a brochure on a day trip up the Sani Pass, we decided to stay another day and brave the toughest route into the kingdom of Lesotho (pronounced “Lesutu”). It was absolutely breathtaking as we climbed to 2874m above sea level negotiating multiple hairpin turns in the snow & ice, through a dramatic pass with sheer rocky mountains on either side, to the border post of Lesotho. We made a quick stop at the Sani Pass Pub to order our lunch so that they could prepare it while we went and visited an authentic Lesotho village a few kms away. Here we watched their sheep gnawing in icy stubble, sat in one of their huts, ate their version of damper (should’ve got the recipe – it was gooood!) and got a history lesson on the Kingdom of Lesotho. Schoolwork for today... tick. Back to the Pub (the highest pub in Africa) for lunch and a hot choc with Amarula, where we met 2 beautiful Christian couples from Cape Town on holiday (Pastors and friends) who prayed for us in the carpark before we had to leave and head back down the hair-raising road to Underberg for the night at the Himeville Arms. Great day! Pete
Wednesday-Friday 18th-20th June 2008
We were planning on doing a “canopy walk” in Tsitsikamma which includes zipping along in the treetops on flying foxes but the wind was howling on Wednesday morning and they cancelled all canopy walks so we hit the road. But oh, this is good! After 2 full days of driving from Tsitsikamma National Park we arrived in the breathtaking Drakensberg National Park on the eastern border of Lesotho. As the sun was setting, we followed a track 30kms into the mountains, passing increasingly dodgy looking guesthouses, wondering how much worse they could get, when to our surprise, what should we find at the end, but a full-on golf resort (Drakensberg gardens resort) complete with 4 restaurants, tennis courts, golf, lawn bowls, putt putt and so on, so we decided to spoil ourselves and have checked in for a couple of nights. First activity for Friday was a 3½ hour walk up to Pillar Cave through a dramatic mountain pass. We all needed the exercise and the kids appreciated it in hindsight. A game of putt putt, then giant chess while Kaz & Maddi spent some time in the health spa finished the day off nicely. (Incidentally, Maddi wins “most improved putt-putter. On her first attempt at the 7th & 8th hole she scored a 12 and a 9, on her second attempt she got 2 holes-in-one!)
We were planning on doing a “canopy walk” in Tsitsikamma which includes zipping along in the treetops on flying foxes but the wind was howling on Wednesday morning and they cancelled all canopy walks so we hit the road. But oh, this is good! After 2 full days of driving from Tsitsikamma National Park we arrived in the breathtaking Drakensberg National Park on the eastern border of Lesotho. As the sun was setting, we followed a track 30kms into the mountains, passing increasingly dodgy looking guesthouses, wondering how much worse they could get, when to our surprise, what should we find at the end, but a full-on golf resort (Drakensberg gardens resort) complete with 4 restaurants, tennis courts, golf, lawn bowls, putt putt and so on, so we decided to spoil ourselves and have checked in for a couple of nights. First activity for Friday was a 3½ hour walk up to Pillar Cave through a dramatic mountain pass. We all needed the exercise and the kids appreciated it in hindsight. A game of putt putt, then giant chess while Kaz & Maddi spent some time in the health spa finished the day off nicely. (Incidentally, Maddi wins “most improved putt-putter. On her first attempt at the 7th & 8th hole she scored a 12 and a 9, on her second attempt she got 2 holes-in-one!)
