Sir, there's a Rhino over there

Day 3: Floand Helena slept every night in the back of their microbus. I think that they prepared the perfect trip for a couple. I am very jealous of them and I would love to go on a similar trip with Sheila sometime soon. They bought a microbus in Cape Town and they just camp in it and travel along at their own pace.

Anyway, we were only able to book one bedroom with two beds and so my choices were either to cuddle closely to Nathan or take one for the team and sleep in Nathan's hammock. The night was cold but I was well covered in blankets. I slept well enough but woke up with my but hanging on the ground (the hammock sagged throughout the night) and I had a sore throat. I feared right away that it was the first day of strep throat. I know what that feels like and it felt like this. Helena has had a lot of experience with strep and said that she could tell me what to expect if I showed her my throat. She took a look and then the look on her face was priceless. It was this face of, "oh my god!"

I took some medicine and decided to just take it easy, maybe even sleep a bit in the car. Fortunately, it never got worse. But I was very worried for the next two days. Strep throat hits me like a sack of bricks. But I guess I dodged a bullet. No more hammocks in cold weather for me.

Our goal on day 3 was to spot a Rhino. There are over 1000 in the park and we figured that we should have seen one by now. It took the work of the eagle eye - some of you don't know but I have something that the apache's call the eagle eye - but I saw what looked like a rhino about 200 meters away entering the bushes near a river. We stopped and looked as hard as we could see. An Elephant emerged so we assumed that it was just an elephant. Then a buffalo emerged and so we figured it was probably a buffalo that I saw. Right before we moved on, Helena screamed, "It is a Reeno" (reeno = rhino).

It was far away but it was still exciting since we had a pretty dull day of spotting wildlife. But the best part came when a British guy pulled next to us to ask what we saw and Nathan replied in the heaviest British accent "Sir, they's a Rhino ova ther'." Tiff and I cracked up for about 10 minutes. He sounded like a 10 year old boy. I'm sure the British guy was like, WTF? You're not british. It definately goes down as one of the funniest moments of the trip.

To end the day, we had to go about 140 k's in one hour. The park booklet suggested that the drive we needed to take would require 3.5 hours. Helena had to get us there, on a dirt road, in about 1 hour and 15 minutes. We hauled balls. It was great because evening is the best time to spot wildlife. We passed another Reeno, elephants, a huge heard of Kudu, Zebra, and Impalas, and nearly gave a Girraff a heart attack. Girraffs are the most awkward runners and this one got scared when our car came screeching to a hault. It started running full speed and looked like it was going to collapse on itself when it tried to slow down.

We passed an old couple (and by old I mean about 40 years old) that was eager to point out this colorful bird. He waved us down and said, "Look, there's a blue spotted guinefowl!" With great excitement in his voice. We looked and then said, "Cool, man." Then he said, "No, look a blue spotted guinea fowl." Then he pulled out a bird book to show us a picture and we looked, smiled and then floored the car to 120 k's, trying to make it to the campsite by ngihtfall. We laughed about that for the next few days.