Animal Encounters

During the safari leg of our South African adventure we'd have a wake up call every day at 5am... up to the main lodge by 530am for coffee/tea and then load up in the open top Land Rover for a 6am departure to the bush for a 3-4 hour morning safari... we'd have another 3-4 hour safari that same day that started at 4pm...

Some days it was warm, some chilly, but it didn't matter because the temperature was all over the place all day long... they weren't kidding when they told us that you could experience 4 seasons in one day...  One day it was raining a little and we went out wearing poncho's! It was a bit too cold that day, but we toughed it out.

Now for some pictures to help walk you through the best adventure ever!

Off we go with tracker Aubrey and our ranger Ronnie

my view while in the Land Rover

Momma Leopard licking her lips while being about 20+ feet away from our truck

big ass land snail near our tent

Momma Leopard's son who was across the street from her at the time ~ we got to hear it growl and it was AMAZING!

Black Rhino, we had to do some off roading to get near this guy ~ it was huge! They are on the brink of extinction mostly due to a silly rumor that their powdered horns could cure cancer and that it is an aphrodisiac... There is no medical proof of either as of today.  It is illegal to poach this big guy.

A hundred or so buffalo just hanging out in the bush on a warm and sunny South African day... notice the red beaked birds on the buffalo?  They eat ticks and other parasites off the buffalo to prevent disease... pretty gross, but needed...

Our first elephant sighting in the bush!! They were gathering up for a dust bath...Very cool!

I'm pretty sure that I'll never get to see a 1 year old "baby" white rhino nursing again! So incredible! What a treat!

Stay tuned.... more safari action to follow!!

Our safari tent

Before I get into the serious Safari details I'll share some pictures of where we slept for 4 nights.  We stayed at Thornybush Chapunga Lodge in South Africa and loved every minute of it!  They do a really great job! I would totally stay there again.  The people are sooo nice and the food is soooooooo good! 

At our camp there were 8 tents like ours with a maximum of 16 people at the lodge per day so the experience was really cozy.

Tent #8 ~ yes we had canvas walls and a canvas roof. One night during a storm we sprung a leak.  That leak and the possibility of a cheetah on our roof started a new McCooey rule: We will not stay in places made of canvas.  By the way, the cheetah ended up just being a monkey.

around 230am one morning I woke up to a monkey on our porch. Mike wasn't thrilled about me screaming and waking him up to tell him about the monkey being on our porch.  I had to, how many times am I ever going to get to wake him up to tell him that and it be the truth?!

Twiggy, our first animal encounter... it just happened to be on our bed.

Can you spot Twiggy?

Our porch.  There was no fence between us and the bush. We'd spot impala's and other animals from time to time.

We had a cool tub on our porch, but never found the time or courage to get in it.

Check out our screen windows, our canvas walls, and the roll up curtains... This is as close to roughing it in the wild as Mike will ever get.

our porch

our very exposed shower...

our tent bathroom... one night we came home to a lizard in the sink... more on that later...