South Africa - J JulesDecember 2, 2013
Dear Sharon,
OK Where to begin. Everything is even better than our wildest imaginations could dream. Flight over was long, but an absolute blast. Business class has spoiled us for life, is definitely a total must for mom. By the time we arrived in Amsterdm,¦which is a cool airport, mom had hugs and well wishes from the whole crew and a fabulous send off to the next leg, which was the same. She had no problem in flight with absolutely no leg pain. In fact, hasn,™t had any since she arrived. Forget the expensive docs,¦.lets just go for travel therapy! Arrived in Joburg to a short but good nights sleep (except you know who, who basically hasn,™t slept since we left. We might try a megadose sleeping pills tonight).
Next morning flew out of a totally quaint FBO (need to design them here) in a King Air 200 for an hours flights with three touch downs at different lodges to drop off others and then on to ours which was last. At the second drop off, teresse started her Oh my god routine and flew out of the plane to a surprise greeting with your next door neighbors Rob, Hadley and wife!!!! Unbelievable. They were on safari and just happened to be taking our plane back to joburg. So Teresee caught up with them during the last leg of the charter and then off we went to the lodge. Greeted with cool towels and ice tea and shown to our rooms overlooking the river in the most remote part of the lodge. Had no time to unpack, in fact haven,™t yet. Had a quick and delicious lunch, then off to our evening game drive. Chip, all I can say is thank god for the video cam and binocs!!! Talk abut amazing. Almost got charged (at least it seemed that way) by a teenage feisty bull elephant who waved it,™s ears, stomped its feet and trumpeted at us from about 20 feet away! Problably jiggeled the camera pretty good for that one as it scared the shit out of me! Mom of course was cool calm and collected about the whole thing. Went on to see more elephants with a two month old baby, lions sleeping, water buffalo, a yawing hippo and then topped it off in the dark with an incredible leopard,¦which the folks that just left had been looking for all week! Then back to the lodge for an amazing dinner by fireside, then to bed to listen to the wonderful sounds and look at amazing sky form our beds. Got about 5 ½ hours sleep and then up at 4:45 to catch the morning game drive. If last night was good, this even blew that away. Rino, impala, wilderbeast, elephants,¦and then four leopard sightings, one with a baby and one that had just made a kill. Was walking through the bush with an impala in its teeth. Terese and I even peed in the bush with three giraffe gazing down at us. That,™s a first!
Only us and one other couple from Germany are sharing our jeep so far. (think another older couple just came). We have same guide and tracker all week and they are a neat couple. Poor gal though. she is deathly afraid of spiders and as we were driving we went right through a spider web with giant garden spider that she almost swallowed. The guide then slapped it away and it basically dropped at moms feet. Mom didn,™t know that it wound up there so she thought it was just a hoot. There are incredible spiders here. I wish you could see mom. She is so totally into this, you can,™t stop her. She,™s got more game than half the other young folks we met!
Teresee and I then did our own private bush walk with the guide and lo and behold,¦,¦saw me a vine snake up in a tree trying to eat birds eggs! Was begging for a snake fix. Actually saw a cobra on the way in too, but it disappeared too quickly for me to get good satisfaction.. It was so cool to be wandering out there in the bush. We could have done that all day but we had to come back for the third meal of the day,¦.and it,™s only about 2:00. While having breakfast we watched water buffalo, elephants and hippos from our deck!!!
Now resting up a bit for the evening game drive. Chip I pray I didn,™t wipe out the footage today. I put a previous disk in to look at if I got the leopards and it started to format. I took it right out, but I so hope the footage is still there. It was amazing. If I did lose it though, not to worry, Teresee has gotten some fabulous shots.
We love and miss you all,¦..but we may never come back.
