Tina’s (Editor in Chief) day to type:

I woke just in time to look at the alarm clock and have it go off in my hand.  What a surprise that was!  But it was nothing compared to the hysterics we were in the night before,  LOAO (laughing our asses off!)   Why? For no apparent reason!  The way Chris first wrote yesterday’s blog, she wrote it like the Meerkat was driving to lunch, not that we saw it on our drive to lunch…. Hence, now I’m Editor in Chief!  This in mind, every time Chris thought about the Meerkat driving to lunch, she would crack up – which had me cracking in turn, and of course the game was on.  We literally laughed for ½ hour straight about nothing!  🙂

Our view from the Safari Jeep

In the morning we packed for our Safari and our driver got stuck in traffic for over an hour, and so did we.   We finally arrived at Mabula Game Lodge 10 minutes before our first drive started!   We had our own private Safari Jeep with Sam our OUSTANDING SAFARI RANGER!

Tina’s award winning photo of Sam and Chris

We saw so many animals… We saw 3 of the big 6: Elephant, Hippo, Rhino!  In addition to those we also saw an Impalla, Wildebeast, Zebra, Crocodile, Warthog, Ostrich, Jackels, an owl (that we almost ran over!), hares and  a 3 week old baby giraffe and her parents (See Pics)

Elephants and Bob the elephant naturalist

Hippos

Rhinos after rolling in the mud – Mama and Cub

Zebra mama and baby with it’s head on her back

Giraffes crossing our path

Just as we were finishing our beers (oh we didn’t tell you, they set up a “bar” in the middle of the safari for us to have a snack and a beer!) we saw lightening and then the God’s opened the sky…  We found ourselves stuck in the middle of an African Safari Torrential Downpour (ASTD for short)  Chris and I were laughing the whole time and Sam was terrified!  (Good thing Farmers made me wait to get my life insurance until I got back from South Africa!)

We had to forge a small river to get back to our room only to find a moat INSIDE our front door with no light to be found!  So we lit candles (which were somehow in good supply in our room – Note to self: when candles are in your hotel room, it does not bode well for facilities maintenance!)  I promptly filled out a maintenance request form but then forgot to take it with me to the front desk.  (Note to self #2:  When you find a pad of maintenance request forms in your room, see Note to Self #1).

Our luck returned when we finally poked our head out the front door to see if it had stopped raining, and our neighbors were just jumping in the car to go to the dining room and asked us if we wanted a lift.  Our mothers taught us not to accept rides from strangers but we made a snap decision (insert snapping sound), whipped off our wet bras and jumped in.  Agreeing after the fact that going commando was the best thing we could have done.

We finally ate authentic African dishes.  Pap (grit-like corn meal with sauce on top), Wildebeast (which tasted like Texas BBQ), Beef mince meat with gravy (which tasted like sloppy joes)…do you see a pattern here???,…lamb (which tasted like…wait for it…chicken!) and delicious veggie curry that was so hot it made Chris’ face turn red.

Finally, Ms. Emily escorted us back to our hut to mop away our moat and flip the breaker to turn back on our power.  We ended the evening with another LOAO session.

Unitl tomorrow…