I last wrote about leaving the village. That was not fun. Amy had to stay as she still has a couple months of service left. She really is doing great things so that's exciting. We continued to drive to Kruger park. It was like a 10 hour drive so that wasn't so fun. I learned how to drive a manual in South Africa where they drive on the left. I wonder what it will be like going home where the shifter is on the opposite side. I am so screwed up with traffic from the travels I never know where traffic is supposed to be coming from anymore.
So we went back to a lodge I had stayed at before. It's near the south end of the park just 8km from the crocodile bridge entrance. It also about 10km from the Mozambique border. Last trip with Brandt we almost ended up in Mozambique whole looking for the park.
We got into the park and saw lions pretty quick. We didn't ever get the best view of them but we saw them. We would see lots of animals. Tons of impala, elephants, rhinos, kudu, zebras, monkeys, baboons, giraffes, hippos, cheetahs(which are pretty rare sight), an we even caught a turtle.
The cheetahs were cool. The mother had been out hunting and the mother and her two cubs had been separated. The cars in between made it difficult for them to reunite but we were able to see them reunited. We saw all of the big 5 except a leopard this time around. It was really great seeing these things with my parents. It was something they hadn't seen. It was a great experience to be able to share a piece of my travel with my parents.
We went back after a long day of animal watching and had a really nice braii at the lodge we stayed.
The next day we would go back to Johannesburg. It was a bit of a pain finding the place we were staying. The day we got in we just stayed at the hotel. The next day before I had to be dropped off we went to the apartheid museum. It's a beautifully done museum about the segregation that was a part of south Africa's recent history. It gave me perspective on some of the issues facing the country. It also gave me appreciation for the man Nelson Mandela was and the impact he had on the country. It's cool to see changes taking place in South Africa and it was fun to talk to my parents about the future and some of the issues they continue to face.
I was supposed to fly out on the 7th and get there on the 8th but my flight took off and about 45 minutes minutes was turned around for technical difficulties. It was a long night as they initially thought they were just going to take the same plane and continue on. That didn't happen. We ended up in a hotel near the airport and I caught a flight from Johannesburg to JFK to LA. I am here a day later but it took 10 hours off my travel time. I was looking forward to getting out of the airport in London but that never happened.
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