Kruger

So this past weekend I ventured into South Africa to go on a wee safari in Kruger National Park. It was quite the feat as I was traveling solo and nothing catastrophic happened. :)

Anyway, for my adventure weekend, the weather decided it was going to mimick Vancouver. I guess the universe mistakenly thought I was homesick and helped me out with a bout of rain, wind and cold! The problem is that I didn't bring November-in-Vancouver clothing, I brought November-in-Sub-Sahara Africa clothing. These are two very different things.

In any case, I did the Safari out of Nelspruit -a smallish city in the Mpumalanga province (North east South Africa). As South Africa has a fairly dodgy reputation, I chose not to brave public transport by myself and booked on to a backpackers' bus. I'm not going to lie, it was a nice vacation to be back in the world of flip flops and ipods :)

I stayed in a very funky hostel on Thursday night, and other than the rain and cold, had a lovely evening drinking cider and chatting with other travelers. On Friday morning, the wake up call came at 5am. Yeeesh. Its a good thing Swaziland has conditioned me to wake up at ridonculous o'clock otherwise there would have been trouble.

Safaris are done in open sided game-viewing vehicles. (seriously, exactly what you picture when you think safari). Anticipating the cold, I literally put on 7 layers of my light-weight breathable cotton clothing, tights, jeans, 2 pairs of socks....and 2 jackets.

It took us about an hour driving in a wonderfully heated small car to reach the Kruger Park gate where my open sided vehicle awaited. Upon arrival, I found a soggy group of Brits and a Frenchman, with some soggy blankets piled into a soggy, cold truck. During our pre-breakfast game drive, after the typical "tell me about your life in 3 sentences" introductions, they informed me that they were going home a day early because they were too cold. Awesome. Additionally, the tents they had slept in the night before had been wet, and there weren't enough beds for everyone. Great.

At this point, I was really hoping the Safari people would give me the option of going back to the warm, dry hostel and refunding my money. They didn't.

So the others left, and it was just little bundled me, huddled in the middle of the 15 seater safari truck, driving around in the pissing rain, and heavy winds. Ha! I love my life!
It turned out to be pretty good actually, even though I was laughing at myself the whole time. It turns out that there was only one dry tent left in the camp, but because I was the only one, I got it. woohoo! And the food, and bed, and guide were fantastic! AND they had drier-dryed wool blankets to add to my breathable-cotton layers so I wasn't even (that) cold. :)

Among the animal highlights were: an entire HERD of elephants 5 metres away from the truck. (I counted 17, and there were babies, and adults:) , a family of rhinos, some giraffes, and some extremely obnoxious baboons with their babies! SO COOL!