The Big Five: Day Two

The next day we followed a river south. We saw tons of hippos, kudu's and crocs. Kudu's are large elk sized antelopes with beautiful spiral horns. They stand with their chests out which makes them look like the kings of the forests.

We came around a corner and saw a bunch of cars huddled around a dead Giraffe carcass. Inside the belly of the mangled Giraffe was a lion. We parked and watched the lion for an hour. It was such an intimidating creature. It was not bothered at all by the dozen cars full of people snapping photos. It had blood on its lips and would literally rip flesh off of the dead carcass. Every now and then it would quickly raise it's head as if it heard something that it didn't like. When it gives that look of suspicion, you realize that they are powerful and dangerous animals. I've seen bears before but Lions take the cake for scariest animal to see in the wild. But the excitement for me is spotting the animals and then feeling like you are really in the wild. It was hard for me to feel this way when you have a dozen cars gathered around a lion that doesn't seem to care about being watched. So in that way, the lion was not as exciting as I hoped it would be.

The highlight of the second day, and possibly of the entire park visit, came as we stopped at a viewpoint and spotted a few vervet monkeys. We turned off the car and got out for a stretch - something that is, for the safety of the visitors, illegal except in designated areas of the park. The clan of monkeys would come close but run off if you made a loud noise or put your arms up in the air. But they wouldn't run far and they would each time try to get closer to the car. Finally, I ran after one of the monkeys that had gotten too close, only to find that it was a sort of decoy. Right when I stepped toward the one intruder, another jumped into the car through a window, ran toward the food, grabbed an apple and hurried out. It was a bit scary but mostly hilarious. I officially got outsmarted by a group of monkeys. Once we regained control of the car, we closed the doors and rolled up the windows. But then the monkeys just climbed on the hood and roof and stared at us. It was awesome! I made a face at one monkey and then he made a strange face back. It was like he was messing with me. Monkeys are just awesome! We all cracked up for about 15 minutes watching them. The pics wont do it justice.

One problem that we came across was that we did not book our rooms or camping sites in advance. So every morning we had to try to find a place to stay for the night. The first night was no problem. The second night, every site was full. The only place that we found accommodation was about 100 k's away and we had about 30 minutes to get there. The speed limit is a fixed 50 k's per hour because of the massive amounts of wildlife on the roads. That night, Flo drove a steady 60 kph to get us to the site on time. We passed about 100 elephants and countless other animals as we blazed down the road.