We Made It!

We were finally able to land in the port of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It was rainy this morning. We had to meet in the Theater by 7:30 to go through immigration. There was a mob of people and we were supposed to leave on our excursion at 8:15. We didn’t start the immigration process until after 8:15. So we were late leaving on our safari. We had to drive 90 minutes to get to the Sibuya Animal Preserve. We didn’t arrive there until 11:00 and were late starting the safari. We were supposed to have a 4 1/2 hour tour but it was shortened to 3 hours. We all climbed into the vehicles and we were off. We had to drive on the main road for a mile or so. With no hat or windows I got blown to bits. Nothing to do about it. We entered the reserve and started looking for animals. We saw some antelope first, Impalas, then a wart hog and her babies. The wart hog was very skittish and ran off followed by the babies. I managed to get a shot of her on the run. Then a herd of zebra came strolling by. They were all pretty far away but I was able to get some close shots with my big camera. Since it had been raining, the tracks we were following were pretty muddy.. We were slipping and sliding quite a bit and going through lots of big puddles. We saw more antelope along the way. One was a Nyala. The males are black and the females are brown with thin white stripes down their sides.
‘After a while we saw some giraffes. There were 3, 2 adults and a young one. They were munching on acacia trees.. Acacia trees have huge thorns but they can get to the leaves. Our guide, Adele, told us they have very little blood in their tongues. That’s why they’re black, and they have very little feeling in their tongues.

We started up a pretty steep hill full of ruts and rocks. At one point we were leaning at least 45 degrees. I was on the down side and thought we were going over. It was pretty scary but Adele knew what she was doing and got us upright again. Once we were up the hill we drove for a bit not seeing any animals, then we started down again. It was another wild ride but once again, Adele did a great job. We saw a few more antelope along the way. A warthog was walking down the road ahead but as soon as he heard us, he ran off.
We crossed over into the lion enclosure. We drove around for quite awhile and didn’t see any signs of life. After a while we saw the remains of a kill, lots of ribs sticking up. So we figured the lions were full and sleeping it off somewhere in the shade. We did see fresh lion tracks in the mud along the road but no lion. We finally left the lion enclosure and back to the regular area. Adele was in an awful hurry but we found out why. We daw 2 white rhinos munching away on the grass. We sat and watched for several minutes. They are such beautiful animals. They were 2 males. There are no females but they are trying to get some. Then we were heading back to the lodge and found an elephant also munching on the grass. He was a beauty. We watched him for 5 minutes or so then headed back. I will finish this tomorrow.
Phots: our vehicles, Adele , our driver/guide. That’s us in the Land Cruiser, the Impala, giraffes, rhino and elephant.