Kruger Part 2

The safari started the next morning when we woke up at 5 am. The night was rough because we discovered scorpions in our shower and large burrowing spiders in the sand around our tents. The bartender talked to us about how many black mambas he'd seen in the past few years, and by the time I crawled into my tent, I was inspecting it for all of these undesirable animals. We also saw a large rhino beetle that was flying visciously, and was huge.

The safari itself was amazing. We saw four of the big five on the first day- elephants, rhinos, lions and buffalo, but we did not get to see a leapord. The big five are named as such because they are the five most dangerous animals in Africa. We also saw hippos, tons of zebra, impalas and giraffes. The lions we saw were sitting under a tree with their kill from the night before's hooves sticking up in the air. Which is really something you could only see in the wild, unlike the other safari that people went on where the lions were fed chicken daily in a certain place so they could be spotted easily. We drove around in greater than 100 degree F heat, and cooked our own meals and the African plains were as beautiful as I'd imagined. We cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, and sandwiches for lunch, dinner varied each night but was usually pretty good. We took a night drive the first night of the safari, in a much larger tank like truck, as opposed to the pick up trucks with stadium seating we drove in during the day. Our guide was a middle aged Scottish man who was fun and knew a lot about the animals and the park, as he'd been a guide for 12 years. We didn't see any large cats on our night drive, which was slightly disappointing, but we did see lots of impala and other antelope hiding in the bushes.

At night we slept in Kruger park, and could hear hyenas rustling outside the fence around our tents. We had a large campfire both nights, and running water from a water tower near by that we climbed to watch the sun set. Hyenas are not tiny or cute. The first one I saw had a large amount of flesh torn from its shoulder and was much larger than a dog with broader shoulders. Supposedly they have one of the strongest jaws. The second day was similar, lots of driving, lots of animals, lots of pictures. The last day, we drove home- well back to Johannesburg where we flew home to St Johns.

On Sunday, we cooked a large Thanksgiving dinner for all the WPI students, as well as some of the St. John's staff. It was delicious, and made me more homesick than anything I'd done so far. Being away for Thanksgiving was easier when I pretended it wasn't happening, but when we ate it by ourselves in the lodge, it was fun but different and didn't feel like thanksgiving at all.

We recieved devastating news this week that our project centre, the Indlovu Project has burned to the ground. More details to follow on that.