Safari

We left Cape Town early this morning heading to the Aquila Game Reserve.  It was about a 3 hour drive through a very impressive mountain range.  It made Snoqualmie look like a freeway overpass.  We shared the road with a family of baboons, a herd of goats and dozens of people standing along the highway selling bowls of grapes.  South Africa is a major producer of wine and the vineyards are everywhere. 

Now, I'm not sure what you're idea of a game reserve is supposed to look like.  There are those where you sleep in a tent amongst the lions all the way up to luxury.  Guess which I chose.

I can't say that we were completely roughing it.  We did have a really cool cottage that included an upstairs loft with a second bed.  And the first afternoon, having elephants walk past our back patio was pretty cool.

One other neat feature of the cottage was an outdoor shower.  Not going to show you the pictures from that.  (They are saved for our private collection).

Safari Game Rides

We did two game rides while at Aquila, each unique due to the time of day we left.  One afternoon and one early morning.  The driver that took us whom we called "Max" because his real name would throw out your jaw trying to pronounce it.

Max taught us quite a bit about the animals.  Things we never knew such as how to tell the footprints of a rhino from a hippo.  However, he did seem to have a fetish for animal dung.  He stopped and taught us everything we never wanted to know about animal poop.  Including, and he demonstrated this, how to pop the little nuggets into his mouth and spit them over the top of the vehicle.  He said that was a game he used to play as a child.  Somebody should have introduced him to marbles.

As fascinating as this "shit show" was, we were here to see the animals.  And boy, did we ever!  I must have taken a thousand pictures and here are some of the highlights.

All in all, a bucket list experience.  One we will never forget.