South Africa: Day Four

Day four in South Africa was the last day of our safari. Once again, we were woken up early, sipped early morning coffee on the veranda and then went for our final game drive. Once again, the drive revolved around a quest for rhinos.

It was dark when we stared out. We immediately ran into two giraffes; I’ve never seen a giraffe lying down before. After that, however, we drove for thirty or forty minutes in a light to medium drizzle. It stopped raining after an hour or so and immediately after it cleared up, we stumbled upon another herd of zebras. This one was bigger than the last, but we didn’t stay long because we were on a rhino mission.

We also drove past at least one hundred impala and then found a big old bull elephant eating breakfast. Watching elephants eat in the wild is hilarious and curious. This guy was grabbing huge branches with his trunk and ripping off all the leaves, stuffing them in his mouth and going back for more without chewing. He also smelled weird and pretty bad, which Palence explained as the elephant looking for a mate. Elephant pheromones smell pretty rank… You learn something new every day.

We left the elephant and drove, drove, drove, which was boring compared to our outstanding day before. We did see another leopard tortoise and a snake whose midsection indicated that it’d definitely eaten recently. Then we saw more hippos poking up out of the water.

Next, we ran into a huge herd of cape buffalo. Their intelligence is pretty obvious if you stop to watch them. The leader of the herd didn’t take her eyes off of us for a second. She was ready to defend her herd at any sign of a threat. Her baby just looked at us curiously, as if he’d never seen such weird animals before. Side note: we weren’t allowed to stand up in the rover even when we were parked and observing animals. One of the things that allow us to get so close is that the animals perceive us as one big animal. They ignore us because we’re huge and don’t seem to pose a threat. If someone stood up, our shape would be disrupted and either scare the animals away, or make them feel threatened.

After the buffalo, we headed back to camp. Operation rhino was a failure, but the safari was an overwhelming success. When we got back to the ship, we found out that while we were one of the few groups not to see rhinos, we were the only group to have seen leopards and the only group to see white lions.

We flew back the way we’d come; boarding our chartered plane was the only time I haven’t gone through security to get on an airplane. When we finally got back to the ship at 8PM I went from gross/dirty to showered, in makeup and wearing heels in 20 minutes flat. I went out for one drink, then Saahil and I walked back early. We did, however, talk to two blonde cousins, one from Zimbabwe and one from Ireland, who thought we were dating and complimented Saahil on me. I’ll take that as a compliment from cute foreign boys haha.

End of Day Four


Love,

Molly

PS. I’ll be in Brazil for the next few days, but this blog will be completely updated within the next two weeks.

PPS. Yes, that means that I will be home in 14 days. :-)