Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Charging Elephants!

Yesterday we saw so many great things. I'm keeping my photos catalogued by date so I can remember everthing we saw.

Today there was a "mix-up" at our place regarding the number of guests/vehicles. So we are not going on an outing this afternoon which quite frankly, is fine with us. We had to get up at 5am this morning to go to another reserve. It was well worth the lack of sleep to see what we saw there today. We saw a whole mess of elephants. It was like a traffic jam on the road - the big (I'm talking HUGE) male with HUGE tusks came charging at the cars. Cars and jeeps were backing up, trying to calm him down. We were a bit down the road but we could see what was going on and then this littler "naughty" younger male hissed and attempted to charge at us. It was so very interesting as the herd tried to cross the road how the large male would stand in the middle of the road until his littlest baby crossed the road. What protectiveness. We've seen real elephant behaviour and it is amazing. As we were leaving the reserve we saw a herd of at least 20 elephants moving in the same direction as our car. Going to a zoo is great but seeing it in real life is something I wish everyone could witness first hand.

We are really tired. I think having this afternoon off (its almost 4:30 now already) is good for us to rest. This vacation is a lot of work!

Oh...a funny story sort of related to work. I had these funky dreams last night. The malaria meds are making me feel a bit nauseated. So I had this dream that I was out with my sisters Cheryl and Karen and I looked down at my feet and one foot had two extra toes and the other had three extra. They were coming out just underneath the real ones and they were just starting to grow. I thought in the dream "the medication must be causing this". I wasn't really all that concerned. I was thinking "I'll need to have surgery to remove these extra toes. I guess its not so bad because I'll have to be out of work at least a month!". I was actually somewhat relieved that I could be away from work for a month. That is a really bad sign about work, isn't it?

We are all getting along fine. Our safari group of 10 includes a Father/daughter from Massachusetts. They are very nice and get along with all of us perfectly.

I've been staying vegetarian and believe it or not I think I'm losing weight. There are no snacks here and we only eat meals at set times. I'm able to buckle my belt one notch over. Weird!

I can't believe we only have two more days here before we move on to Sodwana Bay. Our time there will be a little more relaxed....so that will be good before heading to Kruger National Park. Our time at Kruger will be more like here - lots to see and the hopes of really being able to see the big cats.

I'm off for now. I'm actually going to have time to knit! I'm knitting Renee' a pair of zebra socks for all of her organization of the trip. I'll post a picture of the finished product later. The first sock is only about 35% done.

I'm getting GREAT photos. This is one awesome vacation!

I miss everyone!

1 comment:

Jamie said...

Naomi what you are experiencing is amazing. Thanks for sharing the stories. And you get on me about work! At least I don't have funny dreams. :) Chase and Bean Dog send their love.