That was my wonderful roommate Julia and our co-worker Jack in most of the pics (I was the designated photographer/ EMT/ safety person/navigator so I didn't ride. Maybe this year!)
This one looks like something out of Dr Seuss!!!
(because narrowing it down to 10 was impossible!)
1. Z- one of my favorite kids ever- so adorable, such a trouble maker!Obviously this list was excluding all my people here- I have amazing friends who I will miss SO much. And its no mistake that almost half of this list is food- we take food seriously here!! (Plus I’m Lutheran- we take food VERY seriously!)
So pray for a safe and uneventful day and a half of travel for me!! I leave on Monday night. Craziness. See ya all soon!!
English is a hilarious language. Last night I was sitting around a table with 2 Ausies, a woman from England, a guy from Zimbabwe/New Zealand, 2 irish guys, a Canadian, 2 other Americans (1 from the deep south, the other had lived in Ireland for years) and myself. Talk about cross-cultural communications! All 10 of us speak English as our first language but we all definitely don’t speak the same language! So hilarious! We may use a lot of the same words but the meaning of said words is VERY different!
So my roommate and I have been home sick with the flu for the past few days, but today we were both starting to feel better. I had just gotten out of the shower, when I hear her screaming in the hallway. So I run out to find siafu (safari ants) all over the wall/floor/everywhere. Our house has an extra outside door that we don’t use (it’s “sealed”- how well it was sealed is up for debate), so these ants are streaming in through holes in the sealant, holes in the wall, through the vent at the top of the wall- you name it, that’s how they are getting in.
Safari ants are nasty buggers, they travel in groups of hundreds of thousands, they can get into anything and they have these NASTY pinchers that hurt- a lot. They swarm over intruders. And they can be anywhere. If you saw the new Indiana Jones movie, siafu are the big bugs that carry off the Russian Soldiers in Peru (these just aren’t as big) Usually I see them on the path and can jump over them, or I see them in the grass when they get all over my feet- but you can deal with a few on you. They hurt, but it’s not that big of a deal.
So we have ants all over the wall and floor of our hallway, so Julia and I grab the Doom cans (doom is this crazy harsh insect spray for homes) and we try to spray all these ants but this is an aerosol, so all the ants we are spraying on the walls are now flying back at me and into my hair and clothes- so glad I showered before all this! After killing as many inside as possible and spraying a perimeter so the remaining ants cant get to the rest of the house (because they just dominate entire areas- nothing really stops them), then we went to take on the ants outside.
We are both wearing flip flops because once these guys get into your shoes, you cant get them out and they just bite and bite you. So we run around to the back of the house and there are siafu everywhere. I start spraying the ants but I don’t realize that I’m standing in a huge pile of them (they are hard to see in the grass) so I’m spraying the door, Julia is screaming (because she too is standing in ants), and all of a sudden my feet are on fire. Yup, I’m covered in siafu. So now I’m screaming, Julia already ran off, there are siafu everywhere and our neighbors are all laughing hysterically. What else can you do when your feet are covered in huge, biting siafu?? I just sprayed my feet with Doom (kind of had forgotten about the blisters I had)- so now my feet are REALLY burning, the siafu are still holding on, so I run to the front of the house to re-group.
One of our neighbors, who had heard the screaming, came out and said to pour boiling water over them to kill them. That meant returning the siafu. So we heated up the kettle, I put on my big rain boots (the flip flop idea was really not a great plan- sure you can find them easier but when they are swarming it doesn’t help) and we went back out. This time we were victorious (well for now). The boiling water killed a bunch and hopefully they are moving to a new place (or at least not coming in our house any more. Icky bugs.
Now I have to get all the Doom off me. Now Julia says they are coming in the front door- great! More later!
So my friends and I stayed in tents in the conservancy. Now before any of you freak out that I was camping in a game park with lions (mom that means you) the camp is surrounded by an electric fence (it was all of 2.5 ft tall and it was in the trench that surrounded the camp, but apparently it was effective! No lions in the tent with me!). The camp has a great view of a few of the water holes so animals are always coming right up to the camp (never anything dangerous like a lion or anything) so we would watch the giraffe, zebra, impala, warthog, and buffalo from the dining room or our open tent door. I mean I was about 15 yards from a giant buffalo (one of the ‘Big 5’).
Our first day out, we went on an afternoon/evening drive. We saw plenty of regular game (zebra, giraffe, impala, gazelle, warthog, etc). Now you don’t just go driving out in the conservancy in a car or something. We were in a modified van- it’s a regular van but the top flips up so you can stand while you are driving through the park (you can see way better and take better pics- plus it’s just fun!). so how this works is you drive around for 3.5-4 hours and try to see as many animals as possible. There are other people out in other vans too, but the park is 90,000 sq acres so you don’t see people too often. Our driver/guide (Steve) was great- he really knew the park so we were able to see 3 of the Big 5 in our first afternoon out- we saw buffalo, rhino and lions!!!! I loved the rhinos- sooooo cool, but the highlight of the evening was spotting the lions. Friends of mine have come out to this park and never seen lions so we were so excited!! There was a pride of about 10 lions hunting (well the male was just chillin’ while the ladies were hunting warthogs). We saw them stalking the warthog but they didn’t make a kill (the warthog got into a hole before the lioness got him). So amazing to see!!!
So dad, you trained me well for safari by taking us on all those “whoever spots the 1st deer gets a quarter” trips of my childhood! I was the one who spotted the rhinos on a plain above the bush we were driving through!
We went on 2 game drives the next day, but we only saw zebra, gazelle, impala, giraffe, baboons, warthogs- the regulars. It’s crazy that seeing zebras and giraffes can become common place!!
Our last day out, we got up early and went for a drive at 6:30am. And we hit the mother load. Not only are the bush and plains amazing that early in the morning, all sorts of other animals are out. We were driving down the road, my friends and I admiring giraffes or something and all of a sudden it was there- in the middle of the road. An elephant!!! It was huge. It was amazing. It was about 50 feet from us and moving our direction. Our driver moved the van so that the elephant could pass and it just sort of meandered down the road. 
So in the end, we saw 4 of the Big 5: we saw Rhino, Buffalo, Lion, and Elephant. The only one left is the leopard- but that one is hard to spot since they are most active at night.
So it was amazing. I loved it!!!! There is no way to explain what I saw- it was just beautiful and diverse and amazing. We would be driving and I would just be standing there thinking “Dang I love Africa!”. There is no other place in the world like this. And I get to live here.
Check out some more of my safari pics by clicking on the link (that part of the sentence that is underlined- or just click on the link on the right to my webshots page).
