Safari Day 1

July 2

Holy shit. I was going to write one entry for both days of the safari, but after today I realize that each day needs its own. We arrived at Hluhluwe Park at 6:00 am and it was fucking freezing. I mean wearing two sweatshirts and two blankets and still shivering freezing. In fact I wore a sweatshirt the entire day and regretted wearing shorts. I never imagined I would be on safari freezing my ass off, but given how cool it was it didn’t even matter. My brother and I were the only two people on the safari today; in fact we were the only two people in our entire bushcamp hostel last night. A list of the animals we saw today, in no particular order: buffalo, nyala, zebra, giraffe, white rhino, warthog, vulture, elephant, wildebeest, spotted hyena (two of them sleeping on the side of the road right when we entered the park), crocodile, rain bird, guinea fawn, and impala. Seeing animals in their natural environment and up that close almost diminishes all previous zoo experiences. The early morning highlight was definitely seeing a giraffe and a pack of four zebras less than 10 feet from our van. That was our first up-close encounter with the animals, but it wouldn’t be our last.

After stopping for lunch we started making jokes about wanting to see roadside rhino (which we decided either sounds like a really dirty sexual favor or a punk-rock band, don’t steal the name) but given that we had only seen rhinos from a distance in the morning we figured it wasn’t going to happen. After a long lull from seeing any wildlife we spotted two rhinos in the woods, waited patiently, and lo and behold they made it to the middle of the road. We were sitting less than 10 feet away from the rhinos and watching them for a bit when one finally turned and faced us and started walking towards us. Our guide put the car in reverse and started backing away and we were fine, but we didn’t even realize that there were another two rhinos in the road right behind us. We were caught in the mixer, but came out just fine.

After escaping that encounter we decided we didn’t want to see roadside elephant, and that seeing them from the distance was just fine. Minutes later we ran into a pack of about 15 elephants right on the side of the road and watched them play in the water for a while. It was almost surreal; I cannot describe in words how cool it was. We thought that this was going to be the highlight of the day, but just before we exited the park we saw a watering hole showdown between three rhinos, a pack of wildebeests, and three zebras. The baby rhino was chasing the wildebeests away from the water and marking her territory, and the zebras observed this and decided to walk around to the other side. Seeing all the different animals interact was really cool, and clearly the rhinos are the dominant species. My brother put it best when he said “I’d like to think I’ve done a lot of cool shit in my life, but this may just be the coolest.” Amen, brother. Amen.