A morning picture right outside our lodging. Look at the the view right behind us....
It felt kind of good for a morning walk, especially with the fresh air and all. After about 15 mins of hiking downhill, Derek finally told us to look at the waterfalls. He said that it was one of the three waterfalls in SA that instead of being eroded, it was growing. Something to do with the high carbonate content in the river water. Then it's another uphill climb. This sort of introduces us to a series of seemingly innocent walks that turn into hikes that are to follow for the rest of the trip.
The "Largest growing" waterfall
After breakfast, it's back to the bus. We're now traveling on the lower veld (plateau), as opposed to the upper veld we traveled yesterday. Here, the vegetations are sightly different, due to the altitude. It's the savanna tree vegetation, where trees aren't very tall because of the climate and forest fires. Once again, Derek and Gerhard wouldn't tell us where we were going, only that it would be very cold that night....
On our way, we did a short stop at the humongous tree which is supposed to be the biggest and oldest tree around, which is quite rare due to the climate.
See how many of us can fit into the width of the tree trunk
Soon it was lunchtime and we'd a picnic in some national park. We passed by the biggest tree plantation ever, think the trees are meant for paper or building materials. Since our bus was really too huge to go up the narrow winding road, we had to get down and sit on the back of the pickup. All of us on the pickup was wondering how Daniel, our driver, was going to u-turn the bus on the narrow road between the mountain and valley.
Had the bumpiest ride ever and we had a really close encounter with SA's most venomous snake the Black Mamba...good thing none of us was hurt and it didn't drop from the tree it was hanging onto..Finally reached our picnic site and some of us were conned into having a dip in the river. Good thing I had the sense to test the water, which is as cold as melting ice. Anyway, after Felicia and Debra hopped into the river and sacred us out of our wits, as they were shivering like cold turkeys. Nobody, except Megan and Grace wanted anything to do with getting into the river. They insisted in doing the rope swing into the icy river and David, being such a wonderful father had to jumped into the river to catch his daughters as they jumped in. talk about sacrifices and the girls did it 4 times.
Picnic was over too soon and we are back on the bus. Surprise! Daniel actually managed to turn the bus around and we could see the evidence of the tire marks on the ground!
Finally by 4p,. we reached our "secret" destination. It's actually a private owned safari and we're going to sit in a 4WD and camera hunt for animals. However, the first thing everyone did was to rush to the toilets, then to the souvenir shop for shopping...After satisfying ourselves with our purchase, we went on the the 4WDs. Our guide, Flippy, took us out to the Safari...
Vavavroommm... and we are off...
We've seen quite a number of animals. I thought I was watching Discovery channel the whole time. I can't believe that I was this close to the wild animals and I really mean wild. You can see the whole lot of them in the collage
There's jackals, ground hornbill, white rhinos, lioness, zebras, elephants, warthogs, antelopes, impalas...we even witness a lioness kill.
Happy and glad we are safe and sound after the super cold ride
A last photo with our guide, Flippy
Day 3
We continued our search for the Big 5, which is named so because they are the top 5 most dangerous animals to hunt. We arrive at a cheetah rehabilitation centre and had an intensive course in animal biology. We later left the centre to head for Kruger National Park. I didn't get to see as many animals as yesterday, but we did managed to see some giraffes, more impalas, zebras and lions. Well, i guess that's because Kruger is really huge and the animals are all scattered around the park. One interesting fact seen along teh way is that many workers who are repairing the road are women, while there are only a few men. We stayed at the National Park for the night. As the park is a malaria zone, we were told to be careful of mosquito bites.
