Jim's Point of View
After our first night in Johannesburg, we all left for our holiday. We traveled to a city called Nelsprit not far from Johannesburg. Nelsprit is where Becky lived for two years before they moved that Mozambique. It was nice to get a first taste of a place where she lived even if it was only briefly. We had lunch at McDonalds and continued on our way. Becky teased me about sleeping all time, traveling makes me sleepy.
From there we reached our destination, Sabia River Sun in Hazyview, a very nice and comfortable timeshare resort right near Kruger Park. We unpacked our things and made ourselves at home. Outside the back of our place is a river where there are hippos and crocodiles (don’t worry folks, it was fenced in by electric wire) But I thought it was an interesting sight. We had a nice spaghetti dinner and stayed in the night while enjoying a friendly game of Mexican Train Dominoes. It was fun, I almost won.
We decided to go to bed early at 9:00 pm because we were taking off in the morning at 5:30 am. It was alright with me because I was still pretty tired from flying. So the next day we leave at 5:30 for the park. We ended up waiting at the gates for about forty five minutes before we could get in. Of course the people working at the park gates were very friendly and polite. The gates opened and we were on our way through Kruger Park.
Now my ultimate desire in this venture was to see my favorite land mammal, the Cheetah. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m tall and skinny but I can run really fast so growing up as a child, I’ve always liked the Cheetah because they are pretty much the same in build. They have longer, leaner bodies than those of most big cats and they are the fastest land mammal. Also my favorite snack food happens to be Cheetos but that is just a coincidence.
So with that knowledge we set out determined to spot our favorite animals and everyone was on the lookout for a Cheetah for me. We spotted many animals along the way. We first encountered the Ampalla , which turned out to be our most frequent spotting of the day. Seriously, if deer were this prominent in Michigan as they were here at Kruger Park, hunters would be having a field day. We also spotted quite a few Kudu (which look similar to deer like Ampalla) as well as many herds of Elephants.
Besides our more prominent animals we were treated to many special sights and for me personally. Very early on our trip, we managed to come across a Cheetah, not hiding out in some bushes but right out on the road for us to see and take pictures. It made me happy to see my favorite land animal in the flesh and out in the wild. What made me happier was just how rare this sight was. Apparently there are only 250 Cheetahs recorded in Kruger Park. For how big a place the park is, spotting a Cheetah was the rarest find of all the animals there. Truly, God answers prayers.
We say many other various animals like a Porcupine, Warthogs, Hippos, Baboons, Monkeys (Becky hated the monkeys) and Giraffes. Becky even got to see her favorite Zebras. Unfortunately we didn’t spot any lions or leopards much to our (especially Becky’s) disappointment. Overall, despite being in the car for 12 hours it was a lot of fun and it was cool to see these animals in the wild and not in a cage.
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