CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

When we planned this trip, we had no idea how close we would be getting to the animals and of course had no idea how many animals we would see. We kind of envisioned the animals being "binocular" distance away, but quickly discovered that a lot of animals we could have touched (BUT DIDN'T!) if we had gotten out of our car. Our car was our only protection, and there were a few times we were very thankful for our car!

We had a few encounters that left our hearts pumping. The first was on a guided sunset tour where we witnessed four female lions stalk and then kill an impala. We videotaped the lions having dinner. It's below - warning - if you aren't into that type of thing, don't watch!

The next close encounter came while we were driving down a very narrow dirt road with tall grass on each side and an elephant came out of the grass and charged us. Check out the "aftermath" video.

A third encounter involved baboons. We were taking pics of a bunch of baboons on a bridge and one jumped on our car and took a joy ride on the roof!

We also had an unforgettable experience with a rhino. He was right next to road and there was no one else around. They can't see much which makes them very dangerous. We could definitely sense he wasn't too happy with us but he cooperated and let us enjoy him eating lunch and got some great pics.

We also had to pass a sleeping lion in the road, came a little too close to an elephant rumble, witnessed two leopards stalking impala and had 40 baboon land on our lodge roof which woke us up! These experiences will definitely stick in our memory for a very long time.

THE BIG FIVE ENCOUNTER

When we started our trip, we weren't sure if we'd see all of the big five or not. The second day in the park we saw a leopard in a tree about 200 yards away (see pic), so we knew are chances were pretty good because the leopard and the lion were the two rarest of the BIG FIVE.

Well, we ended up seeing the BIG FIVE and there were several times we'd see a combination of 4 of the five in one day.

We saw three leopards, several different herds of water buffalo, hundreds of elephants including two huge breeding herds, four female lions, and several rhinos. The only animal we didn't see was the male lion.

We had a couple of encounters that ended up a little too close for comfort. One ellee charged us, we spent a 1/2 hour watching a rhino right next to us by the road, and we had to drive past a sleeping lion (see pic). She wasn't much of a threat, but the ellee and rhino encounters definitely got our hearts beating.

In fact, that will be the next blog title..."Too close for comfort encounters!"

Enjoy the pictures and videos!

CUTE ENCOUNTERS

This is a Kudo after doing some dirt digging.

peacock family at our door

Not much to write on this blog. The pictures tell the story. The video called"Dancing giraffes" we decided were two siblings practicing for battle.

A BLOG ABOUT OUR TRIP TO SOUTH AFRICA!

Hi friends and family!

So the idea of creating a blog while in South Africa didn't work! We had very little internet and when we were in a place that had internet we were too busy or tired to get on to post.

So, plan B is to create some post - vacation blogs with pictures and videos that we took. Can't say how long this will take or how good they will be, but Gary and I want to share with you some of the extraordinary experiences we had in Kruger National Park.

As far as things in general, we loved everything about South Africa.

-The people were very friendly and they were easy to understand. They spoke their own language to each other (a type of Dutch language) but spoke and understood English. (PICTURE: The women all carry things on their heads! This picture shows four cleaning ladies heading off to work.)

-Prices for everything were cheap or the same as things in the U.S. The only thing that might have been more expensive was gas. It was sold by the liter, so it is kind of hard to compare, but it seemed expensive.

-Food was good and the places we stayed were very first class, clean and safe (except for the monkeys). (PICTURE: This monkey came and stole a loaf of bread from the neighbor! The Burchell Lodge we stayed in was great. It was right in the bush. We had zebras, wildebeast, baboons right in our backyard.)

-Driving wasn't much of a problem - they drive on the left - but they do drive fast and some of their ways of driving are different. Like, they drive on the shoulders of the road!

The next blog will be "CUTE ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS" - stay tuned!

Our second post!

So I think I have figured this out! We are two days away from "...leavin' on a jet plane..." and are going nuts waiting in anticipation! I tried to take a picture of us in our new safari hats but it came out blurry - I'm not going to retry because wearing safari hats in our living room just doesn't look too good!

Well, hopefully next time we blog we'll be in Paris!

Blog practicing

I am attempting again to set up and use this blog site. I have little confidence! If I can figure it out, I might attempt to use it to post stories and pics. Now I am going to try and attach a picture and then post it. We'll see!

First Blog entry

Ok, this is actually like the third try to create a blog, but like they say, "If at first you don't succeed, try try again." So here I go!

I'm going to start simple by posting a slide show I created using Picassa. The slide show was easy to make, sending it via email not so much. In fact I can't. So this gave me the idea to creat a blog and send the blog instead! How much faith do I have? Not so much, but here goes....