Oh The Places You'll Go!: My giraffes are better than yours.

Sorry for not updating this, I will make it up to you with TWO posts this evening. Let's catch you up on what has been happening.

Saturday morning I crawled out of bed at 4:50 am, got dress, packed my backpack, and ran to catch the 5:26 Gautrain from Hatfield to Marlboro (the Gautrain is a really fancy metro from Pretoria to Johannesburg). Mark (my fellow Clinton School classmate and short term South African resident) picked me up at the station in the infamous Chevy Spark and we drove off into the morning to (drumroll) GO ON SAFARI!!!!!!!! We had planned a 10am safari drive in Pilansburg National Partk about two and a half hours outside of Johburg. We left plenty of time to get lost (which I was actually the cause of) and to drive around the park in the Spark before the planned drive. We got into the park around 8:30 and took a little tour. This is a national park, so it cost a total of $15 USD for Mark, the Spark, and me, which is unreal. Could you imagine driving to the Ozarks and seeing a lion or elephant, because that is exactly what South Africans are doing. The very first animal (I spotted) was a giraffe, followed by some wildebeest, baboons, impala, and warthogs. It was beyond a top ten day. On our actual safari we saw two herds of elephants (with babies!) playing in the lake, rhinos, zebras, more giraffes, about a million wildebeest, impalas, etc. I witnessed two out of the Big 5 (lion, rhino, elephant, buffalo, and leopard) and missed a lion sighting by thirty minutes. I could talk about this some more or I could give you what you really want...pictures!!

PS. We saw so many giraffes that it became a game and the person that saw the giraffe first got to claim it. Mark may have taken better pictures, but my giraffes were definitely better in every way.