The kids actually saw a hippo at the hotel we stayed in last night. OK, it wasn’t checked to room 34, per se, but it was in the river behind the Hippo Hollow Inn (Turns out they’re not just using that name as a cheap marketing trick). Tawnya says, “Alright, we’re 1 for 5 already! Oh wait, the hippo’s not one of the big 5. We’re still 0 for 5. Crap”. (Tawnya: always good for a quote. She’ll have some more a bit later).
Saturday morning: Wow, wow and wow. What a day: We slept in, laid around the hotel, ate junk food and watched TV. Wait a minute, why would we pay this much money to do that? Well, we wouldn’t because we’re K-Staters, not ChickenHawks. So what we really did was get up at 5am, piled on the bus and headed to Kruger National Park. A day we’ve been waiting for. And since I’m blogging this evening, you know we survived. Well, we had approximately 15 students at the end of the day, but who’s counting? (Well, actually Dr Pope is counting; it’s his job to make sure everyone is on the bus after each stop. This is good because math is not my strong suit. It’s not even strong enough to be my weak suit.)
We had one full day traveling in Kruger (6:30am – 5:00pm), and for all the info I had beforehand from people in the know, they said you really need 2-3 days in this huge place to have the best chance to see the Big 5: elephant, rhino, lion, leopard and cape buffalo. (It’s the Big 6 if you include the PowerCat, which we do. The Jayhawk is actually one of the “Microscopic 5”, not just here but globally. Go ahead and Google it, I’m not making this stuff up). So how many of the Big 5 do you think we saw on this single day? 4 out of 5! Which is quite lucky, as it turns out. Which one did we miss? Go ahead and guess; I’ll wait…………. Elephant? Well, sorry, you’ll have to ask your kids about specifics, but a quick Kruger summary: We drove in the park in our same tour bus. It’s not an open safari-type bus, but that was OK because you can’t step out of any type vehicle anywhere, anytime in the Park. Something about animal attacks and death and lawsuits. (I guess they have the same kind of litigation problem as the U.S. experienced with the woman who won a settlement for spilling McDonald’s coffee on her lap. Down here the lawyer might say, “Well, your honor, my poor client was killed when he stuck a marshmallow between his teeth and tried to feed a lion. We feel the family deserves several million Rand to help them get through the loss of this great man, who sadly won’t be able to increase the size of his family and raise several other ‘bright’ children that could one day become lion bait.”) Anyway, I found out about this ‘don’t leave the bus’ rule when I put a toe down once out of the bus door, and our driver Gerhard said, “That’s a $1000 fine and I’m not going to pay it.” Okaaaay, keeping our feet on the step from now on. (Actually, our bus driver, Gerhard is very good-natured, funny and a superb driver. We haul a luggage trailer hitched behind us and to back up the bus without jackknifing that single axle trailer is quite a skill. I would have wrapped that baby around the back of the bus bumper a long time ago).
I’m not going to go into too much detail here (oh wait, too late!); your kids will have plenty of pictures, but we saw a bunch of cool stuff, including zebras, impalas, (apparently the favorite snack of carnivores of the veldt), mongoose and, of course, the hugely impressive elephant dung. It was fantastic. When we saw something big moving in the brush, we were supposed to yell “Stop!” and Gerhard would stop for us to get a better look and pictures. It’s a good system, but in the heat of the moment sometimes the name of the bus driver is secondary. Like Tawnya yelling, “Please Stop, Harold!” Which is fine except our bus driver’s name is Gerhard. (We’re still not sure who “Harold” is). It does make for a long day and I was trying not to doze off during breaks in the action. I was thinking, “I can’t believe this: I’m in Krugar park for one day, and I’m tired? Where am I, listening to my Farm Animal Repro lecture? Sheesh man, stay focused!” In reality, it was pretty easy to stay focused because someone would intermittently shout out, “Stop, Gerhard, zebras!” Or “Stop, Gerhard, eland!” Or “Stop Gerhard, what you see in the rear view mirror that looks like a weather balloon is actually my bladder!” Stuff like that. We did risk a fine with a couple of ladies that needed to find a pink rock out in the brush.
It’s kind of funny when we hear Marianne use new terminology and then when one of us sees that same thing, we don’t always remember the name correctly. For example, here are these large dug-out holes beside the road, and Marianna says “Those are rhino latrines where the males mark their territory.” So when we see another one down the road, I hear a student say, “Hey, there’s one of those “rhino crap drops”. Or, “Look, another rhino poop zone”.
Several times we thought we heard elephants trumpeting in the brush, but mostly that was Ashley’s belching. Normally, I wouldn’t purposely try to embarrass people in the blog, but Ashley seems quite proud of her talent and wants it to be known.
It was a great day and we then headed to stay at Combretum, a private farm of Pieter Henning’s. More on that later….
DrG
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