Kirsty & Deon's Adventures: March 2009 - "If You Fall Off, Run and Climb a Tree"

...the words of our guide on the horse safari as we plotted our path past 3 rhinos. They kept taking long breaks from eating and watching our every move, looking ready to charge us with one wrong step of the horses but fortunately let us go by unharmed! My heart raising moment!

14 hours in the saddle riding through 625,000 hectares of park and 2 nights camping in the bush made for one of my top 3 life experiences. Galloping alongside the water buck and warthog through endless stretches towards herds of buffalo, wildebeest, zebra or rhino made us feel a unique part of the animals' environment and very vulnerable to them. At night in the tent, we could hear the hippos grunting close by. Africa in the wild

One of the top highlights was our first ride to a hippo pool. 9 pairs of hippo eyes glared at us cautiously watching our every move. As we rounded each side of the pool, all 18 eyes continously changed their position in the pool. The horses were reluctant to cross through some water at the edge of the pool and the hippos rose out of the water slightly just to remind us they could charge at a moments notice. Deon's heart raising moment!

We had 3 leopard sightings - one on horseback which we were alerted to by the baboons barking wildly. We watched him marking his scent on the paths. And what seemed a once in a lifetime sighting, a leopard walked in front of the car on our way out of St. Lucia game park and another on our way into Hluhluwe game park. I have some amazing video footage of him prowling through the bushes.

Hilltop Camp at Hluhluwe was our home for a couple nights nestled in the lucious green hills that could make for the back drop of The Sound of Music and what I'd never expect an African game park setting to look like. The bush is very thick so animal sightings come with some challenges unless you were as lucky (or unlucky) as us to be in the car between a moving herd of elephants. We had stopped to watch a mother and a nursing baby ahead and then saw rustling of the trees to the left and right of us. They came marching out of the bush into our path and tried to give us an intimidating head shake to back us away. Through the rear view mirror we realized reversing was not an option as a huge mother elephant was approaching. Thankfully a lucious tree branch caught her attention and she veered away. We watched nervously for about 30 minutes till all 30 elephants moved on. We could hear the intimidating trumpeting sounds of what seemed an unhappy elephant in the bush and had a good giggle and big sigh of relief when we drove by to see it was only a baby showing his place in the herd. Heart raising moment for both of us!

We had many peaceful animal encounters too however the heart raising ones make for a good email. The photos and video will be awesome to see!

We've been busy so my usual emails are a little late in coming. We are in Weenen now relaxing today! Yesterday we did a beautiful 5 hour hike in the Drakensberg and a couple days before that we joined Deon's brother and sister in a 25km mountain bike race through the farmland around the dam. Very exhilarating!