Who Knew The Lion King Was Such An Educational Movie?

How would I have ever known that warthogs run with their tails in the air before going on an African safari if I had never seen The Lion King? On Valentine’s Day weekend I went on a safari that incorporated the two oldest game parks in the Eastern Cape: Schotia game park and Addo Elephant National Park. For the Schotia trip we were picked up in the afternoon by our fantastic tour guide, Justin, whose family owns the park, we later discovered. He took us on an afternoon game drive where we sat on a bench on top of a Land Rover. As soon as we entered the park we were greeted by the sight of zebras, wildebeests, and bushbucks. As we drove around we also got to see giraffes, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, monkeys, a TON of warthogs, red hartebeest, duikers, cape grysbok, ostriches, mongooses, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. By far the most amazing thing was when we saw the lions up close; we got to see two females and two males. After the afternoon game drive we had a very tasty dinner and then went out again for a nighttime game drive. There we got to see the lions once more, and they were lazing around after enjoying the food they had caught. We saw some more of the aforementioned animals and headed to the bush camp which would be our lodging for the night. The bush camp looked like wild African bush from the outside, but once you go through the trees you find a gate that leads into a wonderful little camping area. I suppose you can’t really call it camping when you have two cabins with two double beds and running, heated water.

We sat around the campfire for a while that night and then went off to bed. The next morning we got ourselves up and ready for yet another game drive. We went in search of the rhinos to see if we could find them doing anything other than just laying around. Unfortunately we were unsuccessful but we did have the good fortune to get up close to a few giraffes. I had asked Justin if we could lure them close to the car so that I could see my favorite animal close-up in the wild. Instead he did me one better. He let us get out of the car and walk up close to them! Mind you, we were on the side of the fence where the lions live so he even brought a gun along for protection. I was so excited about the encounter and I was sure that my day could not get any better! We left then for a delicious English breakfast and then left Schotia to head to Addo.

At Addo we met Ali’s teacher who had offered to show us around the park. She snuck us in as South Africans and even paid our entrance fee! She is well acquainted with Addo and made a fantastic tour guide. At the first watering hole we saw around 100 elephants bathing, playing, and drinking. It was incredible to see all these creatures in their natural habitat. We drove around the park for a long time and did not have much luck seeing other wild life until we got to the other watering hole and found around 150 more elephants! There we saw a humongous bull elephant, and also some of the smallest baby elephants of the day. All in all it was an incredible experience and by far the most fantastic Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had!

I know I haven’t updated in a long time so I feel like I should mention that the weekend before this I went on a canoeing safari on the Sundays River where I saw lots of birds and watched our extremely hot guide rescue a drowning baby donkey. Ali and I had a lot of trouble with the canoeing part even though we have both been canoeing before. We ran into the reeds about a million times and even got stuck at one point. It made the trip extremely entertaining! This last weekend I had a very relaxing stay in our home in Port Elizabeth. I spent Friday night at a cricket test, all day Saturday at the pool and the beach, and Sunday at the local market. It was a nice break from all the traveling we have been doing. School is still going well; today we started our unit on rock pools and we are going on a field trip on Thursday to Sacramento to look at the rock pools there. Should be an exciting week and I’ll try not to go so long in between posting again!