Vacation Update!

Hey guys, I know its been a while since I've been able to post. As many of you know, we have to pay for our internet by the mb that we use, so uploading pictures can often be a spendy habit. I'll try to make up for it by giving you all the wonderful details of our trip. I'll upload some photos that didn't make it onto facebook, however for the sake of saving data I won't double upload. We had plans to spend our vacation with our good friend Serban from Romania, however at the last second, his visa didn't work out, so we ended up re-planning our vacation and decided to spend our time camping in Nelspruit. Nelspruit is located in Mpumalanga Province about 4 hours away from our site. We made our new reservation at the campsite and headed out for our site immediately after getting our rental car in Pretoria, where we then packed up and left for Nelspruit the next day. Our campsite was small and cozy next to a river about 6 km outside of Nelspruit CBD. Keep in mind our main goal for this vacation was to unwind and relax away from site, so our game plan was to relax one day for every day we had busy tourist like activities planned. We met a really nice guy named Dirk, on our first night at the campsite. Dirk is an Afrikaaner, however he is married to an English woman and lived in England for over 10 years. So he's pretty accustomed to how foreigners interact and we got along great! Our first adventure day was to see a round of waterfalls located around Sabie. We saw 5 different waterfalls in one day! It was really nice, relaxing and beautiful! Dirk's company is busy installing fiber for a local community that happens to have live game living on the estate. So on our third day Dirk invited us to visit him at work to see the game. We followed him out and got to walk around right next to giraffe, zebra, wildebeests, and antelope. Then the game keeper of the estate (who was a ranger in Kruger for many years) invited us to go and feed the animals with them. It was such an amazing experience for our first safari! we rode around in the truck and helped feed all the different game. It was basically a private game reserve tour for free! What an awesome opportunity! Eric and I truly had a blast! After Shandon Estates we relaxed for a bit, doing some well needed shopping in the city and enjoying our beautiful campsite. Then we drove to Hazyview to see the reptile park. I won't post pictures in honor of my sister, however we did see a lot of really interesting reptiles! We saw crocodiles, slithery friends and a few cool frogs! The following day was our big adventure to kruger. We had been told by the game head at Shandon to enter at Crocodile bridge and follow his recommended path to see the most, so of course we listened. And of course he was right! We also heard from many people that the most important thing is to show up at the gate no later than when it opens (at 6) to make sure we get to see all the animals while they are active in the morning. We woke up at 4 am and left our campsite at 4:30 to arrive at the gate by six. We arrived in just the perfect amount of time and were one of the first cars in line. (which was a long long line.) We even got lucky and got the resident price at the entrance gate! (saved us about R200 each!) so that immediately put things off to a great start! Then almost immediately we saw giraffe right by the car. The animals are quite skiddish of people, however they are really used to cars so they don't even react to you while your in the car (which is the whole time, since you're not allowed to get out haha!) We started our drive down the dirt roads and followed the path our friend had recommended. We saw everything! it was sooo wonderful! we saw all of the big 5 and at least 3000 antelope! They are everywhere! We were getting concerned we weren't going to see any elephant as we hadn't seen any and were only 10 km away from our exit gate, however just in time, we saw a beautiful elephant grazing in the field off to the right, we were so excited and got our final celebratory high five that we gave each time we saw one of the big 5. Then just a few moments later, down the road, we saw an entire herd of beautiful elephant! It was the perfect day! We saw everything we wanted! Elephant, Rhino, Zebra, Giraffe, Buffalo etc... It was the perfect safari day! we had our delicious packed sandwiches and enjoyed every minute of it! After Kruger we had one more adventure on the list. We wanted to go to the Moholoholo Endangered Species Park. We had been told by a scouts friend that this was really worth the visit! And let me tell you... it was! We were able to see a cheetah run (where they have the cheetah chase a rag from one end of a field to the other... so fast!) and so many other amazing species! They are not all endangered, however they are all in need of a safe habitat. Some were poisoned, trapped, injured or just raised by humans and unable to return to the wild. We saw so many amazing creatures including, leopard, a baby rhino, a baby giraffe, eagles, vultures, lion, lynx, honey badgers and so much more! Eric even got to pet an eagle! Which for most of you who know, Eric loves eagles!! He was so excited! We also got to pet a cheetah and spend personal time with the baby rhino in its field. It was such a wonderful experience and well worth the 3 hour drive each way! After Moholoholo we returned to our campsite once more to pack up and head home the next day. Eric then returned the rental car to Pretoria the following morning. It was an amazingly perfect vacation and gave us every bit of winding down that we needed after a long term at school. Enjoy the photos!

Dirk