South Africa, continued.

I never finished writing about my time in South Africa. I’ll make a long story short so that I can move on to India. I went on a three day safari to Kruger National Park with some other SASers. It was 13 of us total--so it was a nice small group. It was a lot of travel time to and from the safari sites. We flew from Cape Town to Johannesburg, which didn’t take very long but the drive to Kruger took a really long time. Our tour company never specified how long the drive from Johannesburg on our itinerary so when we got in the van we asked our driver. He says 5 hours. Some of us thought he didn’t hear us correctly, and we were like, “No, not how long our safari is. How long to our lodge?”And he repeated 5 hours. Hahaha it was really funny—we laughed and made ourselves comfortable. The drive was a little closer to 7 hours because of all the stops for lunch and gas and such. So we finally arrived to Tresimana Lodge, where we departed for our sunset safari. It was so cool! We saw giraffes and a rhino from a few feet away! We were in an Indiana Jones-like vehicle. Very cool. Then, we drove a few minutes away to our Treehouse Lodge. It was actually a really, really awesome outdoor lodge. We had drove into the lodge and there was water buffalo and impala just hanging out by the gate!

The next day we woke up early for our full-day safari at Kruger National Park. I’m really glad I came to this park because we saw a lot of really cool animals. We only saw four of the Big Five. The Big Five are the elephant, the water buffalo, the leopard, the lion, and the rhino. They’re called the Big Five because they are the hardest to hunt, or something like that. We almost saw the leopard. Our guide saw it but it was hard to see so couldn’t make it out. It was crazy because our guides could spot these animals from really far away. We saw elephants, zebras, more giraffes, cool birds, etc. The lions were the most stunning to see.

The next day some of us got up for a bush walk in the lodge. We walked around and the guide explained some of the plant uses and told us about the animal droppings and all of that. We had breakfast and departed for the airport. We stopped for lunch at the same place (really good food) and stopped at a canyon place for some sightseeing and to buy some souvenirs. We finally made it back to the airport and back to Cape Town.

The next and final day I went on an SAS trip called Operation Hunger. We went to a daycare in a poorer area of Cape Town and tested the kids for malnutrition. We weighed them, took their height, and their arm circumference. Luckily, most of the kids did not meet the criteria for malnutrition, very few were at risk, and about two met the criteria for malnutrition. Then, we visited a feeding center in a township. Here, there were low-income families and homes that were shacks made out aluminum. It was really eye opening to see the other side of Cape Town and I’m glad I got the opportunity to go on this trip. We arrived close to the time we were supposed to be on the ship so I quickly ran to get some postcards and stamps and made it back on time. I went out on deck to watch the ship depart—it was so sad! Cape Town—definitely my FAVORITE stop so far!