The Honeymoon in South Africa (Part 3)

Safari Day 1:
There isn't too much to mention about our Safari adventure that wasn't captured on video or in pictures so I'll be able to keep it short for the most part.
The 9:30 flight to Hoedspruit was a relatively short one; two hours on a 50 seat plane. The term regional airport takes on a new meaning when you start to land and notice an impala running across the runway and into the woods. The airport itself was more or less a visitor center with a checked baggage counter. We had only packed two suitcases and two backpacks in an attempt to avoid checking bags. It wasn't until later that Jillian had discovered that she had forgotten to put any of my pants in those two bags.

 The arrival started off a little rocky as we were told that a driver would be at the "arrivals gate" (aka the Parking Lot) with a sign that read 'Kapama Southern Camp'. There were signs for all other resorts... but no Kapama. We walked around and ran into a woman with a Kapama shirt, explained our situation and she began speaking Afrikan into her two-way radio. Our driver was preoccupied and we had a replacement en route. Twenty minutes later our driver showed up, we loaded up our bags onto an open air Toyota Land Cruiser modified for safari viewing and began to pull out of the airport parking lot. I wasn't looking forward to the long drive after our flight, but the driver assured us the game reserve was very close. He wasn't joking, we drove across the road and right into the entrance of the reserve. Within 5 minutes we were watching Kudu, Impala and Giraffes feeding while we drove to our camp.

Arriving at the camp, we were offered damp cloths to wipe our hands and faces then handed fresh lemonade while our bags were taken to our room. After we had been given details about our stay, the facilities and optional extras (like the spa and elephant-back safari) we made our way to our room, unpacked and unwound a bit before heading to the dining facility for a late lunch.
Later that evening we had our first evening safari. There were only two vehicle safaris each day and we would have to wait until our 5 am wake up call for the next one. We saw a lot more that evening but, unfortunately, as the sun went down, none of our cameras were able to capture decent pictures or video. We followed our evening safari with a delicious buffet style dinner and a short night of sleep.

Safari Day 2:
Our morning wake up call came WAY too soon. I had made the mistake of playing the movie Tommy Boy on my tablet before we went to bed and Jillian and I stayed up too late watching it. Thank goodness we didn't sleep through our call, because the morning game drive was awesome. Post-trip, I would tell anyone that morning drives were always better than evening drives. We weren't on the trails for perhaps ten minutes before we came across a female lion that was waking up and looking for breakfast. We trailed it for a while before it found a couple unsuspecting impala and took to chase. Despite the distance from my phone, I got a decent video of the end of the chase as both animals ran between two of the safari vehicles. I could not have asked for a better first morning drive, but it got better. We later found an entire pride including a dominant male that scared Jillian right out of her seat. We followed them around for the majority of the day, getting much closer to them than any of us were comfortable with.

There were a few other memorable things on our first day. Jillian and I met Fabiano; a gentleman who worked at Citibank in Columbia. He would be there for roughly the same length of time that we were and would be joining us on all our safaris. We also took a trip to the River Lodge between morning safari and lunch to have massages at their wellness center. It was my first professional massage and was so good it put me to sleep. I actually woke myself up snoring. While we were at the River Lodge we were able to stop by their gift shop and buy me a $70 pair of green 'shants' (pants that turn into shorts via well placed knee-level zippers) to replace the jeans Jillian left in our rental car at the Cape Town airport parking deck. With my sweet new shants in hand, we grabbed a mediocre buffet lunch before we found our driver and went back to our much newer and fancier camp.

That evening another couple, Carlos and Debbie, from Columbia joined us for our night drive. This one was very uneventful. Afterward, we had a nice dinner with a bottle of Riesling accompanied by local music performed by our wait staff. There was no late night movie via tablet this time but there was still little sleeping b/c Jillian got a pretty severe headache from the sulphites in the wine.

 Safari Day 3:
Because of limited space, we had booked an elephant-back safari excursion the day we had arrived. It wasn't until the morning of that we realized we probably should have booked it for an evening trip instead of missing a morning game drive. Regardless, we were up early for this as well. We had our own driver, Brad, take us to the Elephant center. It was a pretty miserable morning. It was cold and very windy and there was a light drizzle on the horizon. Once the other visitors started to arrive, we were introduced to the elephants; all rescues from different parts of the continent that had formed their own herd of orphans.

After a story and instructions, we walked up a ramp and had an elephant come by so we could hop on. Jillian and I ended up on an elephant named 'Somapani' which means "Giant Warrior". I actually have no idea what it means, but I'm sticking with that story. The elephant ride was a very unique experience. Definitely a slow moving 'safari', but worth every minute. There was even a point at which we all stopped so a guy could take all of our pictures and one of the three baby elephants (the first birthed within this herd) laid down beside us and let out the loudest and longest fart I had ever heard. It had Jillian and I both laughing... along with everyone else in earshot.
When the safari ended we got back in our topless land cruiser and froze our asses off on the way back to our camp. Thanks for getting us blankets or something Brad. It wasn't until we returned for lunch that we were told we had missed wild elephants on the morning safari. It was a bummer, but having ridden elephants definitely made up for it. We would end up not seeing the wild group before leaving.
That evening a couple from Denmark, named Ula and Christian, joined our group as Fabiano left, taking a flight to Cape Town on the last leg of his South African Tour. We told him that we'd see him in the cape (though that, expectedly, never happened). It wasn't until after our night drive and having disclosed that we brought mace, that we discovered that our new friends from Denmark were also police officers. It was stressed that if we ever go to Denmark, the mace, apparently being a highly illegal weapon, should be left in America.
 Our last night at dinner, Carlos and I tried the mushrooms in garlic sauce before discovering that it was actually snails. There was a good laugh about it and how none of the women would try it, but at least I can say now that I have... and it wasn't terrible. We both stayed up in bed a little before going to sleep; Jillian writing in her travel journal and myself glued to an ESPN game tracker set on the Auburn v Texas A&M football game. It was around 10pm and I was able to get to about the middle of the second quarter before I was on the verge of passing out, so I stopped my pathetic viewing of yellow and blue lines on a virtual field and went to sleep.

Safari Day 4:
The day started off a little rough as Jillian had another headache when she woke up. It probably didn't help that it was still a bit cold and windy. Fortunately, our driver, Dennis, had actually packed us cotton ponchos and we were all pretty snug going out. The drive started off a bit slow, but picked up a lot of steam at the end. It was a grand finale that included the scarcely seen buffalo, rhino and hippo. No leopard was spotted so we didn't get all of the big 5, but the driver and tracker tried their very best and we appreciated it. After we got back, we packed up everything that we weren't donating to the local orphanage, said our goodbyes to the couple from Denmark and then got in a car with Carlos and Debbie to go to the airport. A few hours later we were back in Cape Town.