A wimoweh

If you know me well, you know that I don’t really enjoy animals. It’s not that I don’t think animals aren’t cute or anything, but I don’t really find pleasure in petting a kitten, and seeing people kiss their dogs makes me want to vom. It’s just not my thing. Despite these facts, I sincerely enjoyed our time in Umfolozi Game Reserve these past couple of days, because unlike with people’s pets, I wasn’t peer pressured into petting them or sucked into looking at dozens of pictures of them dressed up for Halloween on friend’s phones.

We left Thursday afternoon with the Skyview Church Team and Scott our animal expert/braii master (Scott works at the Seed and a braai is like a barbeque with less potato salad and more meat than you could ever imagine) It’s about a three hour drive which was long and hot, but full of fun and fighting between dad and I over whose music would be played in the car… “Music died in ’89!”… That’s his only argument.

Anyways, 5 minutes into our time at the camp there was a warthog sighting followed by a chorus of “a wimoweh a wimoweh a wimoweh a wimoweh” in one of our first numbers from the Lion King Soundtrack. It was impressive. We saw a few more animals on our way into the park which was cool, but not nearly cool enough to be mentioned in this paragraph. We got settled in our chalets which were super nice and lovely minus the bugs and the unidentifiable cat sized thing that jumped on Shelina in the middle of the night. We had a braai prepared for us by Scott which was quite impressive because preparing a braai is an art form. It requires skill, timing and a great resistance to the meat sweats.

The two full days we spent there were long and filled with driving and animals, some of my favourite moments included:

-          Our up close Rhino sighting: We saw a whole lot of Rhinos on Friday, almost to the point where we were becoming Rhino snobs and we were caught saying things like “Come on, another Rhino?! I’m sick of seeing Rhinos.” But at the end of the day, there were two giant Rhino’s on the side of the road that we were literally 20 feet away from. It was both terrifying and exciting and I got some golden pictures that will be shared on facebook in the near future. So awesome.

-          Elephants: They are HUGE and beautiful and so scary up close. We witnessed one of them knock down a tree and it made me a little worried for our safety in our tin can Avanza.

-          Lions: Dad had been to the game park twice before and had yet to see any cats, so I wasn’t holding my hopes high for anything, but we saw 4 lions Saturday morning at about 6:30! There had been a kill nearby and there were vultures circling, hyenas and lions watching it all unfold. So wild.

-          Cheetahs!: At this point we had seen Elephants, Lions, Rhinos, Water Buffalo, Nyalas, Wildebeests, Giraffes, Zebras and so many other animals, that we felt like we had gotten our money’s worth. But then all of a sudden out of the blue we got the bonus of three cheetahs sitting under a tree. They are so lean and so beautiful and they really gave me a new appreciation for non-human life. Haha

All in all it was so great and crazy to be 20 feet from animals that could kill you if they wanted to. We also got to know the team better, now I know that Gary Henderson is a mad man and totally fearless (which I’m not always convinced is the best thing for his safety. Ha!)  And Shelina is a lover of animals and can remain totally calm when faced with what could be a traumatizing event. It was such a blast and I can’t wait to come home and bore you all with a million pictures of animals you don’t care about! And then to make it fair you can show me pictures of your pets!

xo

Alanna