Bonus Days

December 30 - 31

After seeing the Big 5, anything else is pretty much just a bonus.  Including any additional days in your trip.  We were fortunate enough to have basically two full bonus days and we were pretty lucky to see some cool things on those days.  Yesterday, after having a fairly disappointing first 3 hours (you can imagine how well it went over with me to see nothing between 4:30 am and 7:30 am) the morning was redeemed by a herd of zebra.  Yes, I said zebra.

We had all but given up on the morning and were headed back to the rest camp to have a shower and take a nap, when about a kilometer off the main road we happened upon a small group of zebra.  We didn't think anything of it at first until I noticed that one of the two babies in the group looked a little off - why was their red on a black and white animal?  It took a minute for us to realize it, but it was actually missing what looked to be a chunk out of it's left hindquarters.  After a slightly closer inspection we saw it wasn't really a chunk, but a huge piece of skin was hanging off of it and you could actually see the claw marks notched into the skin from where it had been attacked.  As we were watching, a hyena appeared across the field and sat watching - we presume to try and figure out exactly how injured the baby was.  Surprisingly enough, the lead zebra was having none of it.  He led the entire group across the road, directly in front of us, toward the hyena.  They moved slowly but surely and ended up scaring the hyena off.  We watched in awe as the hyena finally got up and slunk into the bushes in stare down defeat.

Finally leaving the still skittish zebras in peace, we continued on our journey back to the rest camp only to be slowed down by 7 or 8 cars on the side of the road.  We were unsure what they were looking at until an impala sprung through the clearing followed only seconds behind by a cheetah in full chase.  Sadly, we only saw it for a moment, but it was definitely an incredible sight.

This morning we began our journey out of Kruger and back to Pretoria to spend New Year's Eve there before heading to the Maldives tomorrow.  On the way out of the park, my tracker husband noticed a lioness walking along the turnoff road near the river.  We hurried to get onto the road and spent 15 minutes following her, taking photos.  She looked completely exhausted and pretty much just ignored us and everyone else who was following her.  She walked up onto the main road where we managed to get in front of her long enough to take one last picture before she turned and disappeared into the grass.

Still hyped up on the excitement of seeing the lioness, we pulled over to get pictures of some vervet monkeys that were playing in the trees and along the side of the road.  I'd been trying to get a good picture of one of their tiny babies all week and this was the perfect opportunity since there were lots of them in view.  Just as I had managed to focus on the nearest baby and it's mother, I heard a huge thunk against the car and pulled the camera away from my eye, only to be staring into the face of a vervet monkey that had jumped onto my window ledge and was just staring at me.  I screamed and froze as Nando went into immediate survival mode - shoving me toward the dashboard and telling me to roll up the window all while preparing to punch the monkey in the head if necessary.  Fortunately, my startled scream scared the monkey enough that Nando's martial arts skills were not needed in the end and I did manage to get my baby photo.

Only minutes after the monkey incident, we came upon a group of cars waiting for an elephant crossing.  Apparently one of the cars had not read the material on not following or getting too close to elephants because they tried to go around the elephants and succeeded in irritating a young bull to the point of him charging them.  We were thankful to be far enough away to only be video taping and snapping photographs as fast as my finger could move rather than to be the ones being charged, but fortunately, despite their lunacy in trying to cut through a herd of elephants, they managed to get out of the way of the charging elephant and took off down the road while the elephants moved off into the trees.  We quickly got out of there while we could and before we knew it, we were at the gate and headed to Pretoria.

It was interesting that after 7 days in the park, I kept thinking that I was seeing animals.  I would say "oh!  An...oh...nevermind," when I realized that the elephant I was looking at was really only a tree.  The speed outside the park was a tad overwhelming as well.  We hadn't been over 50 km/hour in a week and instantly we were going 120.  It felt fast - although, that could be because our poor little baby blue, 1.2 liter, Chevy Spark was struggling to go over 110.  We weren't really willing to go less than 120 though, no matter how hard it was on the little Spark, once we saw the "hi-jacking hot spot" signs on the side of the road.  Nothing to keep you moving like a little fear of carjacking!

In Pretoria, we checked into the fabulous Sheraton Hotel and were put on the club level in a room with an absolutely amazing view of the Union Buildings, South Africa's White House equivalent.  The hotel gave us a lovely bottle of honeymoon champagne which we drank while ringing in the new year, watching the fireworks and the lightening light up the city.