[From Dylan & Adela] We went on safari in South Africa in Madikwe Reserve. We saw guinea fowl, ground squirrels, lions, elephants, white rhino, pearl spotted owl, baboon, zebra, red hertebeest, genet, water buffalo, wildebeest, warthog, monkey, steenbok, kudu, jackal, dwarf and slender mongoose, hundreds of other birds including the yellow and red horn billed birds. The most common animal we saw were impala — golden brown with black stripes on their rumps. We saw African wild cat though we did not see the wild dogs. We saw giraffe and we saw about 3423 trees.
[from Dylan] I met two friends– Peter and James. Peter is 11 and James is 9 and they got into fights with each other sometimes. I enjoyed playing soccer with them and marking my territory with them in the Bush when we had a drink break on our game drives.
I saw elephants drinking at the waterhole close to our lodge. But luckily there was an electric gate between us and the animals. But on the game rides we got veery close to the animals. We saw a lion and it was only 6 feet away from us. The lions we saw were mostly sleeping. My mom saw some lions that nobody else spotted and they were brothers who defend a territory. There names are Mateja and Cholo and I took a photo of Mateja licking his chops. I thought he was going to eat me for breakfast.
First thing in the morning I got up and got dressed for the safari ride. It was really cold– as low as 34 degrees F. Then I had a muffin and hot chocolate before getting in the vehicle. We sat down in our seats with hot water bottles on our laps and we wrapped ourselves in blankets but it was still very, VERY, very COLD! We went out in the morning and the evening because that is when most of the animals hunt down prey to eat. So if we go out in the middle of the day we won’t really see that much action. On the safari ride our driver was Jacques. He was really nice and I could ask him lots of questions. I got to sit next to Jacques and it was awesome. You got warm air when you sat in front because you got a blanket, hot water bottle and even two blankets AND you got warm air from the heaters and that felt really good.
We had to look for animals and we would find them on the road, in the grass, behind bushes. My favorite animal is the lion. I like them best because they are cool. They can run really fast. They can kill other animals. The thing that is really cool about them is that they bring down every animal except water buffalo and elephant.
We also watched some soccer in the evenings: Italy Paraguay 1-1; Brazil v North Korea 2-1; Germany trounced Australia 4-0. Slovakia and New Zealand tied their game 1-1. Slovakia scored right after halftime in the 49th minute of the game, and in added time someone from NZ boomed it right in the goal. It was awesome. It was really good and there was this player Ozil from Germany who missed three chances at goal. The second try he went around the goalkeeper but missed his shot. You can read more about soccer in my next blog…