South Africa

Our last day before the 2 day trek home we spent at the Jane Goodall Chimpanzee Reserve in Nelspruit. The reserve has 30 chimps, all who have lived a heartbreaking life before being rescued.

Our tour started at 1000 which is feeding time for the chimps. This one was just waiting to get his breakfast.

This young male looked like he was doing some serious thinking in the tree.

Then he decided to pose for his glamour shot.

The reserve had three different enclosures so three different communities. This enclosure had a male, female and lots of young chimps. When the dominant male came over for breakfast the female ran up to him and greeted him with a hug.

Because these chimps are usually taken away from their mothers when they are murdered the don't have a parent to spend their youth with. So they end up making close friends with a "sibling". Many of these would walk around with their arms around each other.

The young apes spent most of their time after eating playing and wresting.

At the second enclosure the scene was dominated by a male that had been brain damaged by humans who kept hitting him in the head. He was also taught to suck his thumb and still does it frequently. But because he is brain damaged he doesn't know any better than to run up and down throwing rocks at us and clapping his hands. He had actually bit off part of the finger of our guide in the past.

The next enclosure was what the guide called the real chimps. These are the adults and as soon as we got there a couple of the females got in a fight and the dominant male tried to break it up. Because we were standing so close to the enclosure he also threw huge rocks at us and a large tree branch that got stuck in the fence. We had to move early so no one got hurt.

Luckily for these chimps they were rescued a brought to a place where they can live out a healthy life. These will never be allowed back in to the wild.

On the way back thru Marloth Park we saw some more zebras and I got to practice my black and white shots again.

Unfortunately our trip is over and we have to start home early in the morning. However we had one more excellent meal of ox tail which is popular in South Africa but actually just a stew. One more night drive did not prove to be very productive for us so we called it an earlier night.

This will be our first day in Kruger in an open safari vehicle so I'm very excited about that. Its a little chilly at first in the morning but I get over it.

I have now taken several pictures of most animals in the park so I start practicing with black and white. I liked this one of the warthog.

It wouldn't be a day in Kruger in the spring without seeing a baby elephant. This one for some reason was carrying this branch along as they walked.

And this one thought if he couldn't see us we wouldn't be able to see him.

Another group of babboons crossed the road in front of us.

I took so many photos of giraffe last time that I laid off a little but I couldn't resist this one.

Sometimes I think they find us more interesting to watch.

Little did I know that my best Kruger moment was about to happen. We turned on to a dirt road and saw the tail end of a lion disappearing into the bush. When we got up to the spot another lioness was coming out on the other side of the road.

And then another and another and another. Us and the car on the other side of the road were the only ones to witness the event.

There were 14 lion cubs that crossed all in a line.

A total of 20 lions crossed before it was over. The sad part was that the huge male was at the end of the lion and that is when my camera decided to quit taking photos.

Nothing much could beat this sight but we did stop at a river crossing and see these turtles resting on a rock.

This monitor lizard was the last interesting thing. Two of them actually met up and we thought there would be a great fight. But in the end they just bobbed their heads at each other and took off in opposite directions.
Before the day was over Monet fed us another great dinner and took us on a night drive around Marloth Park. This amounted to putting plastic chairs in the back of Andre's truck and driving around with a spot light. Our big find was a hyena near their dump site.

Today's schedule had us hiking in the Drakensburg Mountains. However overnight it rained and the morning was very cloudy. The point of the hike was to get to a scenic overlook that would not have been visible with that weather. So instead we drove back to Marloth Park a day early. The drive was 8 hours without much excitement. Lunch was at Wimpy which is a restaurant similar to McDonalds and very popular in South Africa.

When we got back to Marloth Genie's son, Monet, had arrived for his vacation. He is a chef in Cape Town so for the next three days we ate really well. I was a little bummed about not being able to hike but the bonus was that we would get another day in Kruger and this time it would be in an open vehicle...and I got another day of seeing my bush babies

The Midlands Meander is a set of roads in the Midlands of South Africa that have all sorts of small shops and craftsman. There was everything from furniture we would love to have, leather goods, jewelry, antiques, African themed goods and wines. I had a blast driving from one shop to another. Lunch was at a brewery in a gorgeous mansion. The beer left something to be desired as most of it was cold but the food hit the spot. When our meander was complete we were on the road to Escourt and our next overnight stay at the Blue Haze. It was another gorgeous place with a large lawn overlooking a lake. It was the prom that weekend in South Africa and some teens were there taking their photos by these palm trees.

Early this morning we were on the road again for St. Lucia, another world heritage site. We were in town for a cruise on the lake but stopped for some breakfast first.

The town is well built up for tourists with lots of restaurants and shops. It also has the greatest donut I ever ate.

The focus of our cruise on the lake was hippos and crocs and we saw one right away. There was a family of three to include a little baby right under the bridge when we got started.

The next thing of interest was the weaver birds that make these upside down nests.

The males make the nests and if the females don't like them they take them apart until its done right

The focus was crocs and hippos but this is about the only croc we were really able to see.

We did see tons of hippos again.

They were very playful just like in Kruger!

They compare the sizes of their mouth to see who is the most dominant.

They also were chasing each other around in the water.

We were also able to see several fish eagles relatively close up - they weren't catching any fish though

The guide on the boat passed around a huge and very heavy hippo tooth. It is easy to see how they could kill someone by biting them in half!

After the cruise we hit the highways again for the midlands. Our hotel was absolutely adorable and a nice change from the rustic accomodations in Sodwana. The place was a B&B called Penny Lane and it was run by a French expat. He was a very talkative guy and recommended the restaurant St. Ives for dinner. It was a very good choice and a beautiful location.