Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), South Africa

We were finally able to dock in South Africa.
Had to cancel our 4 day Safari we had booked and instead went on the Viking safari one day excursion. And it was Excellent!
We started out clearing South African customs, then on board our bus for a 1.5 hour drive to the Kariega Private Game Reserve. Along the way our guide told us all about what to expect, like the white and black Rhinos, which are all grey. It's the Dutch that occupied South Africa who named the Rhinos and the words were eventually taken to mean black and white. The difference is that white rhinos have broad mouths and eat grass (the ones we saw) and black rhinos have smaller mouths and eat leaves from trees and shrubs and not grass. Also, Elephants are very afraid of bees, so they place bee hives near the endangered trees to keep the Elephants from pushing them over and eating all the leaves. Dung Beetles in South Africa do not fly and roll up the elephant dung into a ball, lay an egg in it and bury it. The larvae eat the dung ball and crawl out to live their lives. Since the Rhino horn is more valuable than gold in some parts of the world they are hunted by poachers. So they cut off the horn just above the point where it grows back so that the poachers won't kill the rhino for the horn.
And it takes about 7 years to grow back to they just keep 'trimming' it and the poachers leave them alone.
We learned all sorts of trivia about the animals here.
Once we got to the reserve, we boarded our open air jeep. We got the back seat to really experience the ride and bouncing around. As we drove through the natural land and dirt roads, we got to experience the actual raw natural landscape and habitats of the wild animals here. There were tree covered hills, open grassy flat land areas, a river running through full of hippos. The list of animals we saw was Lions, Zebra, Giraffe, Rhino, Hippo, Wart Hog, Impala, Nala, African Buffalo, Ostrich, Wildabeasts and Kudu. After the safari we had lunch at one of the lodges, outdoors overlooking the wilderness. Of course we got some shopping in at the gift store....magnet, rhino socks and Scott got a T-shirt.
This was just a day of a lifetime with all the nature and animals right there around us.Read more