South Africa II

SAFARI!

After leaving at 4:45 am, Friday turned into a long day of travel, and we finally made it to the game reserve to have a late afternoon game drive. We stayed in chalets with mosquito nets around our beds- a first for me. I didn’t know anyone on my safari, and it was really nice getting to know everyone and meeting people without knowing anyone else on the trip. My roommate and I had leftovers from our box lunch in our chalet and when returned to our cabin from the game drive all we found were wrappers and crumbs!! As we walked in I saw my roommate’s Oreo wrapper on the ground and looked at her really confused and said, “You never ate that did you?” She looked at me and we both just died laughing because the one thing the resort warned us of happened… the MONKEYS ATE OUR FOOD!! Stupidly, we must have left one of the doors open on the balcony of our chalet. The monkey took my roommate’s Capri Sun, probably thinking it was food and juice was everywhere. It took the entire creamer and sugars from our coffee maker, opened it, and between the juice and creamer on the monkey’s feet we had little monkey tracks all over our chalet. We probably laughed for a good 20 minutes, took some pictures, and then headed to dinner. We went to sleep pretty early since we were exhausted from traveling and were woken up at 6 am for an all-day game drive. My safari group was great; we all got along really well and had a lot of fun hanging out the entire day. I met some really fun people! We saw rhinos, elephants, zebras, giraffes, impalas, water buffalo, and much more! After lunch we had a lot more energy and had a great time with our guide who told us stupid safari jokes and played stupid tricks on us. We dared him to get out and walk toward a “sleeping” buffalo, which he immediately said no to, then finally did it. He took only a few steps toward the buffalo before it “woke up,” rather realized he was coming toward it, and I swear, I have never seen something so large get up so quickly. You imagine that these massive animals would take a good 5 seconds to get to their feet, but NO! This thing popped right up and started stomping its back leg like it was going to charge us. We all begged the guide to get back in our car and we pulled away pretty quickly. It was a pretty exciting thing to see! After that, we saw another car from our group who had seen a lion, so we took their directions to where it was. On our way, though, our guide pointed out a tree full of Baboons, one was a mother with her baby, which our guide said was probably only a couple weeks old. After watching the mother and her baby, we were startled by what we saw on the branch behind them… monkey lovemaking. For some reason we were all very entertained by this; sounds immature, I know, but hey, we had been in the hot sun all day long and you probably would have found it interesting, too. Needless to say, we missed the lion the other group saw! Moving on… We had a great time on the safari and had to head back early the next morning to Cape Town. I got back around 5:30 and everyone was getting ready to go out to dinner for Dylan’s 21st birthday. After dinner at the waterfront, I bought some groceries at the mall since Dad’s package of food didn’t make it to me on the ship and we had to be back on at 9 pm to leave at 11. Our departure was delayed until the next morning because of fog on the coast, but the second we hit open waters on came the nausea. Apparently, sailing the tip of Africa is some of the roughest waters in the world, where the Atlantic and Indian Ocean meet. We have experienced some pretty large swells already, but they are supposed to get worse. Hopefully I’ll get my sea legs back soon and not have to worry about meds. Overall Cape Town was phenomenal! I highly recommend taking a vacation to this wonderful place. We all almost cried when we left. I definitely didn’t get to do everything I wanted, including bungee jumping (I know many of you are excited about that), so if you’re up for a trip, I’ll gladly come along! I have a lot of papers to write, all of which are supposed to reflect on my experiences while in port… I wish I could just turn in my blog, writing three different reflections, a blog, and keeping up with my journal is a lot, but I try not to skimp out on all the great details that make my adventures so memorable! Next stop: Port Louis, Mauritius. The girls and I have rented a villa on the beach… SAS spring break time!! Until next time! Xoxo Marissa