Friday, December 12, 2008

Hakuna Matata
















Well, unfortunately our trip to Africa has come to an end. We had an amazing time, and would definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone! We flew out on Dec 1, and after a 14 hour flight, we arrived in Cape Town around 11 pm. We had rented a car and Doug had the challenge of driving it...it was a right hand drive car and they drive on the left there (luckily we were able to rent an automatic so that was one less thing he had to worry about). We safely arrived at our hotel without too much confusion. The first day there we just spent exploring the V&A waterfront and eating wonderful food. Then the second day we drove down to Camps Bay to take some awesome pics of the "12 Apostles" which is really 12 peaks in a row on the mountain top and it is amazing looking. Then we tried to take the mountainside road along the cliffs, but it was closed due to high winds, so instead we drove south to Boulder Beach to see the penguins. After spending some time with the wild penguins, we drove further south to Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. We had an adventure here when a family of wild baboons was walking the road in front of us and we rolled down our window to take a picture. Suddenly two young baboons jumped on the hood of our car wrestling, while we're rushing to roll up the window!!! It was definitely an exciting moment...we got it on video too, so ill upload that soon, its a good laugh! The next few days we spent exploring Cape Town, we went up on top of Table Mountain because we wanted to repel down the side of it, but then everyone got evacuated off it b/c of winds. It was seriously the most wind I have ever experienced...it was neat though b/c we were literally in the clouds. I took two pictures of Doug up there and the second one you can barely see him through the cloud cover!

We checked out of Cape Town on Dec. 6 and flew to Port Elizabeth where we were driven to our Safari lodge. Our lodge was located on a private game reserve that is close to 30,000 acres and home to all the big 5 animals. Upon arrival at the office, we met our ranger, Barend, and we hopped up on his LandRover so he could drive us to the main lodge and our chalet. After only 3 minutes of the drive we rounded a curve, and there was an elephant in the middle of the road! So Barend took us on a quick 20 min drive and we saw another elephant and some giraffe!! Then we went to the lodge.We were blown away at arrival. Everyone on staff was waiting for us outside and they had welcome drinks for us, somekind of watermelon cocktail that was delicious, then they took our bags to our room and we were given a tour of the place and then taken to our room. Our room was unbelievable and we had a deck that had a private plunge pool that overlooked the watering hole. Throughout our stay we saw elephants come and bathe in the water from our deck and a hippo and giraffe. It was AMAZING. Barend was really awesome, he knew so much about the animals and we had him all to ourselves. There were only 2 other couples at the lodge and we each had our own ranger and own truck so every drive we got our own private tour! Our days consisted of waking up at 5am, then we had morning tea and muffins til 530, followed by the morning game drive which we usually came back to the lodge around 930 and then we sat down for a WONDERFUL breakfast. Then we usually swam in our pool and just hung out or took a nap until 1 was lunchtime, and at 4pm was high tea and cake, followed by the evening drive which lasted 4 hours and came back for dinner and drinks. The staff was amazing and they went over the top in everything they did, food was amazing and we got to try a ton of African cuisine that we never would have tried anywhere else and everything was delicious! We definitely highly HIGHLY recommend them. http://www.kichaka.co.za/

All together we took over 1500 pictures and Ive sorted through them and picked the better ones and posted them on snapfish to share with you all. So just click on this link and it should bring you to the picture website. http://public.fotki.com/122305/ Once you're on the main page there should be two different albums from our trip that you can open up and view. Hope you enjoy them all!!!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Guys, That is awesome and so are the pics. WOW!!!!
I'm so very proud of you both and I'm very happy that you both get to see the world.
Never stop enjoying and your memories will be plenty.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic blog entry, really first rate. I run a South African travel website and I've linked to it from a write-up we did on Kichaka.