First Week in Africa

We made it! It was a long trip, 19 hours by plane and 3 hours by bus (a big van actually), but we made it safely to Brooke and Jed's place in Masoyi. It's in the Mpumalanga province in the Northeastern part of South Africa. The scenery here is stunning. It's quite mountainous and still very green even though it is autumn. For our first weekend we went to Kruger National Park--one of the most famous places in Africa for wildlife viewing. We stayed there two nights in a very nice rest camp. Our place had a bedroom, two bathrooms, and a kitchenette. The park is setup for you to view animals from the safety of your car, but we didn't feel very safe when a huge elephant made an aggressive move towards us (thanks Jed for being quick on the gas!) We had a great time, and we saw lots of amazing animals like elephants, hippos, giraffes, antelope, hyenas, crocodiles, cape buffalo, warthogs, and baboons. You're not allowed to drive your own car after dark, but we went on an organized night drive and saw two lions. We watched them for several minutes and even saw them mating! Right on the side of the road not even 15 feet from our truck! It was incredible!

We intend to stay with Brooke and Jed for a couple more weeks and do some volunteering for their work place called Hands at Work. We will probably do some camping and also head into Swaziland. Then Kim and I plan to rent a car and head for Cape Town. We're having a great time so far.

We managed to upload a few pictures to Picasa. Click HERE to view them. Hope you enjoy them. We really enjoyed reading everyone's comments, so keep 'em coming!