The Final Frontier..Africa!

We finally saw the zebras and wildebeast as well as a giraffe.  I am pretty sure that Matt knew that they were there and would be easy to find so left them for thursday night. 

Sundowners that night were pretty special.  We parked on a hill looking over the river and Matt pulled out a table and table cloth and tiffen full of treats then opened the champage.  Meryl would have approved.  After that we went out a found the African Wild Cat.  Which pretty much looked like a house cat, but apparently was very rare.  Just after we left they say a "kill"..which apparently consisted or a cat killing a mouse.  To celebrate the rhinos we had seen in the AM, we rewarded Matt with beer and more beer.  Of course we had to drink along to be polite.  Moira was especially sociable that night.  We were talking to Matt about what was the hardest thing and his response was "the discovery channel was his nemesis".  He then talked about the Youtube video of the cape buffalo being eaten by the lions and then the crock and then the buffalo huting down the lions.  It takes place in Kruger...google it, it is really something.  Anyway after that the night digressed into Youtubes culminating with Rebecca Black Parody and of course...Double Dream Hands.  We have evidence of Sharon and Moria double dream handing away!

The next morning we got up and had a drive before we left.  This was pretty special, we started out by seeing 3 teenage hyeneas in their den.  The mom was not around.  They were quite curious and came right up to the truck.  Matt knew they were there so took us to them specially.  Their den was at the most southern part of the reserve so it was a bit of a hike.  This is where Cynthia's master tracker status kicked in.  She was spotting animals right, left and center.  It started with the hyeneas and then she spotted 5 giraffes, then a kudu and then a worthog.  The worthog was just the thing that Sharon wanted to see so that capped it off for her perfectly..then the radio started going like crazy.

We saw the remains of a kill!!!  And the amimal that did it was the elusive cheetah so we ended up with 200 points for the cheetah and another 200 for the kill.  She had killed a small impala and was chomping down on it.  Apparently she only has about 30 mintues to finish it before the other vultres and heyenas start to push her away from it.  She started by eating the best parts (the hind quarter) and then the innards.  She would eat for about 5 minutes then sit up and look around to see if anyone else was coming to take the kill from her.  We had to leave before she finished but it was pretty freaky to watch.  I can hardly wait to see Sharon's pictures, she had the zoom lens so I am sure they are amazing.

We then got back to the camp and packed up to go to the airplane to go back to Joburg.  Of course there was a giraffe waiting on the runway for us.  It was funny after the first two days of seeing elephants everywhere, we never saw them again until we got up in the air over Mala Mala.  Goes to show  you need to enjoy with animals when you see them because you might not see them again.

When we landed in Joburg, we got picked up and took a tour of the downtown...a bit like Detroit.  It was very depressed with a lot of abandoned buildings.  After that we took a tour of Soweto.  It was much less depressing than I thought it would be.  There were shacks for sure but there were also some nice well kept brick homes with lovely gardens.  We also saw Bishop Desmond Tutu's house and Nelson Mandela's house.  There is a street dedicated to both nobel prize winners.

From there we went to the Arptetide Museum.  This was very interesting and moving and took you through the progression from the 1920's to the elections in the mid 1990s.  There was also a Nelson Mandela exhibit where they had the jersey from the rugby world cup depicted in Invictus.  It was signed by the team captain and Mandela.  Very cool.

We are now in Schipol airport in Amsterdam.  Moira has gone to visit her aunt and we are charging up devices for the last leg of the trip home. 

It has been the trip of a lifetime and would not have been the same without my travelling companions.  I know I got grumpy sometimes, but they humoured me, so thanks for that.

When I get home I will post a bunch of pictures.

Thanks for following!

Lorr