South African Honeymoon

Friday, August 29

We had dinner outside next to the fence overlooking the river last night, at the restaurant in the camp. It's wonderful out here. The air is clean, people are quiet, and you can hear animal noises off in the distance. We even have monkeys sitting on the roofs the buildings here in the camp.
After a night's rest, we took a couple more pictures of the camp and our cottage...

What the cottages in the camp look like:

This one was ours. There is only one door - a sliding glass door in the back, where the patio and outdoor kitchen are.

Becca standing by the tree in our back yard.

You can see the river a little better in this next one.
I woke up early this morning - around 3 or 4 o'clock - because I couldn't sleep anymore (I think it was just all the excitement about being here), so I decided to go out on the patio and have a smoke. Of course it was still completely dark outside, and as I was sitting there I started hearing huge, massive things splashing around in the river right on the other side of the fence here. After a minute of the splashing, I started hearing them grunt to each other -- there were hippos splashing around in the river, less than 100 feet from where I was sitting!
I didn't have a flashlight on me, but I really wanted to try to see them, so I walked over to the car, planning to turn on the headlights to see if I could get a look. I unlocked it, grabbed the handle, and got the door open about two inches when I heard something hiss at me from under the car! I don't know how I managed to close the door back, because I jumped about 3 feet and ran back to the patio like a little girl.
That was the only time I got scared on the whole trip, and my heart was pounding. Good times!

Master of my domain.

The Honeymooners

After a few pictures and grabbing some snacks at the store in-camp, we took off on the long, scenic drive north to the Mopani Camp, where we would be staying for the next two nights.
The road to Mopani....

Waterbuck

Nile crocodiles:

I just thought this one looked cool through the dirty glass. What are they?

African Buffalo -- looks like it's honeymoon season for everybody!

This ugly bird is called a southern ground hornbill. We thought it was a vulture at first.

More elephants right next to the car - they weren't nervous about us in the least. After a minute they decided to walk between the cars to cross the road.