South African Safari: Monday

I met Taylor in Johannesburg on March 8th, where we stayed a few days so I could recover from some jet lag, and see some of the city Taylor spent most of his time in during his Global Project. When I was mostly recovered on Monday we headed out on our supposed 6 hour drive to the game lodge we were staying at for our Safari right on the border of Kruger National Park, Cheetah Plains. Little did we know...

So our first mistake was not following the (not so) clear directions to the lodge that were included on their website. It looked a lot longer than the route Google Maps wanted to take us so we trusted her, don't trust Google Maps in South Africa, okay? Just don't. 

There was a ton of rain during Taylor's week in Joburg, and when I got there it was still raining fairly hard and constantly. This is important to note because it is actually NOT typical this time of year for it to rain so much. Usually SA gets the majority of it's rain in January, and as March is technically the end of Summer there the rain has usually stopped pouring and its usually fairly dry. Because of the rain it was super gorgeous, super green (although, the vegetation that grows on the first half of the drive strongly resembles our desert landscape in Arizona! Minus the cacti), and super treacherous. The roads at first were A THOUSAND times nicer than the roads in DC, I mean, sooooo smooth. Until we got about 2 hours from the lodge. 

The potholes then became frequent, and no tiny wimpy potholes were these. No, I kid you not, many times on our drive the whole left lane would be completely non-existent. The potholes that pock-marked the streets weren't your average potholes, they were monster potholes; deep, wide abysses. This made driving down the winding roads much like Mario Kart when the guy in front of you seems to have an unlimited about of bombs and bananas trailing behind him, someone should make a video game "Driving in South Africa", it'd be popular...and extremely difficult. This is the part where I gloat about my husbands amazing pothole dodging skills, nay driving skills in general! On the opposite side of the car no less! On the opposite of the ROAD!  It was like driving through a mine field. Thank you, Taylor, for keeping us alive. 

Not long after we started into the pothole minefield, it became more challenging. Not only did we have to dodge potholes and missing pieces of road, but it soon became clear that there are no traffic laws, or at least that no one follows any sort of basic road rules. And neither do pedestrians, though, who am I kidding, where DO pedestrians follow any sort of road rules. Cars coming from the opposite direction were constantly coming into ongoing traffic with no warning whatsoever, and seldom even looking at the road while driving, I don't know the death rate related to car accidents here, but it has to be extremely high. At one point, had we not stopped for gas, I'm sure we would have been involved in the five car pileup we saw as we left the station.

Now comes the don't-trust-Google part of our adventure. So six hours, right? Soooo wrong. Try eight. Google told us to turn down this tiny, sandy/muddy dirt road. Now, on the website it mentioned an unpaved road, so we thought..We found it! Well, about 5 kilometers down our little dirty path (which was literally like four-wheeling, not flat, at all.) we find our way blocked by a lake created by the recent heavy rains and we had to turn around and cross our fingers we could get back through all the sand and mud in our little two-wheel drive VW Golf rental car (we decided that the worst business Idea anyone could possibly ever come up with is to own a rental car business in South Africa, that Golf was next to destroyed when we turned in the keys at the end of our adventure...no joke.)

At this point we decided that maybe we should have followed the directions on the website, but not wanting to lose service on our Google Maps navigation we left her on and decided that Kelcie was now Goose (but Goose that doesn't die...Taylor doesn't like it when I call myself Goose, but I can call him Maverick...anyways...). This had nothing (or quite a lot) to do with the the incredulous looks we were being given by the locals who's homes were on this beautiful dirt road, some of those kids were cracking up at us foreigners trying to drive a puny VW down their street, and I won't lie I was incredible nervous that we would get stuck, It was super sketch. 

Don't worry, this isn't the only wrong turn that Google (and my mis-reading of the website directions) took us down. There was yet another! This time, about 300 meters from our turn onto the ACTUAL road that would ACTUALLY get us where we needed to be, the road was completely washed out and we had to turn around yet again. Google Maps SA is a whore. 

After a mini emotional breakdown by yours truly, and a fantastically motivating pep-talk from Taylor we got back on the road and this time silenced Google altogether, and eventually found the RIGHT scabby dirt road that took us right to the game reserve gate, and from there right to the "front door" of our lodging for the week.

Bonus points: we made it just in time for the evening game drive!!

I literally cried during the evening drive, it was so incredible to see such beautiful animals in their natural home, no fences, no one feeding them or taking care of them, just as our Heavenly Father intended! It took my breath away I kid you not! It was so beautiful and green because of all the rain, and we were really lucky to see so many animals out and about on our first game drive! Our guide, Ephraim, was spectacular! He's local to the area and really knew how to track the animals, plus he was incredibly funny! We shared our game drive with Natalie from Poland and Nelda from Cape Town, South Africa and they were wonderful company! 

This beauty is called a European Roller, he was my favorite! I don't know why, but I have an affinity for birds, and the birds in the park were some of the most colorful and beautiful birds I've ever seen!

 The Impala were so funny! I wish I had caught their little tails on video, because it's sooooo cute when they flick them! And those ears! 

This was the part where I teared up. I cannot even begin to express how amazing the elephants were. It doesn't hurt that they've been my favorite animal for as long as I can remember. They were such impressive beasts. You literally cannot hear them, they are so incredibly quiet, which is impressive because of how massive they really are! Did you know they eat as much as 300 pounds of food in one day! And look at how much space they have compared to the zoo! I was so happy to know that they can roam for hundreds of miles without any restrictions! 

 You can probably tell from these photos ^ that Taylor was in control of the camera.

This is the rig we drove around in, it was actually really cool, and as long as you don't sit in the very back row the ride is fairly smooth and comfortable. On the right side of the photo is our guide, Ephraim, who I was praising earlier. On every game drive we went on (morning and evening), there was a point about half way through where we would stop for drinks and snacks and to watch the sunset and listen to the silly frogs that sounded like drippy faucets. We tried our best to locate the source of the dripping noise, but those frogs were sneaky little guys.

When we got back to the lodge we were escorted to our little hut to clean up a little bit before dinner. We weren't allowed to walk around the lodge or even leave our huts after dark and had to be escorted to dinner every night, the reason being that there was an electric fence around the lodge to keep out the big animals (elephants, hippos, buffalo, giraffe), but it didn't keep out the wild cats and dogs, which were known to venture into the camp looking for food! Crazy! 

Dinner was fantastic, and we had the chance to meet the other guests at Cheetah Plains, all of whom, besides us and our game drive friends I mentioned above, were there as part of a photography safari group. They were so nice to us and gave us some awesome photography pointers. Talking with them also made me realize how lucky we were to be able to go and do this safari in the first place. Many of the other guests were later on in years and a South African Safari has always been their dream. I'm not yet 25 and I seriously felt so blessed that we were able to go do this so early in our life. It wouldn't have been possible has Taylor's school not given him the opportunity in the first place to be in South Africa for his Global Project. We are sooooo incredibly grateful!

*I've decided to break down our Safari into separate daily posts, because guys, there are so many photos. This post would LITERALLY be a 100 page novel, and I'm pretty sure I'm using literally correctly here. There is THAT much to say, and there are THAT many photos to share. So please come back and keep reading! I'll try and pop them out pretty quickly!