Stepping out of the Groove: The Garden Route and on Safari in the Western Cape

Safari

Hi! This is Kenzi. For the past week, we have been on safari in South Africa. It has been really fun seeing African animals in the wild!

Our first park was Bontebok National Park. In the 1930’s, there were only 30 Bontebok in the entire world! South African National Parks (SANParks) specifically founded Bontebok National Park to save the species. They succeeded in doing so. When we were there, there were dozens of Bontebok! The park is right outside the town of Swellingdam. We saw several species there: Burchell’s Zebra, Red Hartebeest, and, of course, the Bontebok (including right in camp!).

The next park that we went to was Addo Elephant Park. This is the 3^rd largest game reserve in South Africa. On our first night there, we went on a game drive and were surprised because we only spotted one elephant! We also saw many warthogs and kudu. The next morning, however, we saw plenty of them. Some of the babies we saw were the size of Rock! Comparatively to the big ones, they were VERY cute!

However, the sightings of the week were spotted on the last morning. We had gotten up early to go to the southern part of the park. Right before we got to the turn off, we spun around a corner and saw a spotted hyena in the middle of the road! As if that wasn’t cool enough, it had the leg of a red hartebeest in its mouth!

As we were coming back from the drive, still having not seen any big cats the entire week, we took a bathroom break at the park’s picnic site. We had a look at the sighting board and noticed that a lion had been spotted at the dam (watering hole) close to where we had seen the hyena! The kill MUST have been at the dam! We decided to go to that dam and just check it out. We saw two lions!!!!!! YAY! I was so excited!

Now we are at Mountain Zebra National Park. We haven’t done a game drive yet. More updates to come!