Kruger Birthday Safari

Well, I had a great B-day weekend at Kruger National Park in S. Africa. Five fellow TDYers and I ventured off on Friday afternoon after work to the infamous park in hopes of seeing some of the "Big 5." After managing to get through the God-awful process of crossing the border into S. Africa with the help of some wise colleagues, we drove to our 'our cottage' outside of the park. (I have never seen a border crossing so bad in my life. Luckily for us, we got to go through the special VIP section or I might still be standing in line to cross the border). Our cottage was the perfect wilderness escape. We enjoyed some grilled chicken for dinner and had a nice early b-day celebration for me (as someone--I won't name names, Steve-- convinced us to eat the cake we were able to buy in S. Africa a day early) on Friday. Then we went star gazing. The night sky was absolutely amazing. You could see a million stars, the milky way, and shooting stars. I made some wishes on those shooting stars, so we will see what happens. :-)

We got up early on Saturday to get to the park before sunrise. There were still over 50 cars ahead of us waiting to get into the gate when we got there. After about an hour and half wait, we were finally free to drive around the park in our little VW. I suggested that we take one of the dirt roads inside the gate and it turned out to be one of my better decisions. About 5 minutes into the drive, we literally ran into a herd of buffalo crossing the road. There had to be at least 200 of them in the herd. We watched them for about 20 minutes before the road was cleared for us to pass.

Then we went on and saw almost everything imaginable, except for the lions and other big cats--they are harder to find and see. My b-day wish to see lots of animals, especially giraffe (my fav) came true. They say a picture says a thousand words, so I will just post some here without much narrative. I will be uploading more to shutterfly in the next couple of days, which you can access by the link to the side of this webpage. The bird pictures are for my mom and friend Jenn--who is one of my few friends who actually took the time to sign up to follow my blog. :-) And yes, this is a big hint to try to get more of you to become one of my blog followers.

After a day of seeing all sorts of animals, we went back to our cottage that backs up against Kruger. We decided to walk down to the park border (only like a 5 minute walk) to see if we could see any animals. To our luck (and astonishment), we were able to witness a herd of about 30 elephants very close up. It was amazing and the highlight of the day. There were even baby elephants. Sooo cute, but also a bit scary to be that close.

Sunday, we did a game drive in an open safari vehicle. Not even a flat tire on one of our vehicles could stop us from seeing more wildlife. It was a bit cold, so the animals were a little scarcer, but we got some close up pictures of zebras. We were able to hear the lions, but still no sightings. We missed them by only 5 minutes.

Then it was back to Maputo to get ready for another week of work.

All things considered, this was probably one of my best b-days ever. Still miss celebrating with everyone back home, but if I had to be away-- this really couldn't have been beat.

P.S. I hope everyone enjoys the pictures, because they took me a ridiculously long time to upload tonight for some reason.