Students Of The Globe - A Family Travels The World: Safari Tour

After breakfast on Friday morning we headed to Moholoholo Rehabilitation Center where we learned about their efforts to help captured and injured animals.

An interesting fact we learned was that 200 years ago the animals more or less roamed all of Africa and today only a tiny fraction of the land is available for them to live safely. Like all aspects mankind's progress this comes with significant consequences. There is a large public media campaign to stop the Rhino from being poached but there are many others animals in worse shape but suffer from being less "famous" than the Rhino. Technically Kruger park is "fully booked" as there are is only room for 7000 elephants but there are currently 17,000 living inside. Territorial animals with no territory ultimately will escape the park and then find themselves in some sort of trouble often ending in death or injury. Additionally, Mouti is a religious practice that seeks after various animals for their "healing" qualities, which really have none. For example, hyena knuckles are used for hypnotizing and hyena tails are burned and inhaling the smoke supposedly causes one to become invisible. Practices such as this are affecting the animal populations and make the national parks that much more important. Moholoholo steps in to save and rehabilitate animals when they can with the hope of being able to re-release them into the wild.

After our introduction, we headed to the vulture’s cage and were allowed inside to feed them. We were with a group of about 25 people and if you wanted to feed them, you had to put on this large leather glove that covered your entire arm. Our oldest waited his turn, put on the glove, and was given the raw meat to hold out in his gloved hand. Mom was at the other end of the group taking a photo of him when the vultures came and flipped the meat out of his hand. It all happened so fast it was hard to track what was going on, but the vultures were fighting and a small piece of raw meat landed on mom’s dress. The vultures came after her, pecked the meat off, ripped her dress, popped some blood vessels and broke a bit of skin, until the man next to her kicked it away! It was pretty crazy, but thankfully she was okay. We were told it was a first! Why wouldn't it be mom, who doesn't really like birds anyway?

Oldest feeding the vulture before it attacked mom!

We then moved on to observe the lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, and other animals. Many of the cats watched SJ incredibly closely and a couple even jumped at the fence near her. Dad made eye contact with a lion and was roared at when the lion was about 15 feet away, only separated by a fence.

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G with his favorite animal, the leopard

Dad causing quite a stir with the lions - we think they like his long hair!

Oldest with a cheetah - his favorite animal!

Boys enjoyed learning how a honey badger kills a water buffalo!

Dung beetle

After leaving the rehabilitation center, we drove a ways and then stopped at this delicious pancake place for lunch. Then we headed to God’s Window, a lookout spot with an area to hike. We were all so excited to stretch our legs and hike, but unfortunately it was foggy and there wasn’t much to see and we were on a bit of a time crunch to get to our accommodations that evening.

Family at God's Window lookout

SJ being cute

Playing in the sand with a great lookout!

We ended up staying in the middle of nowhere at a place that didn’t have any food options. This was a bit of a let down, and although it had a great pool, tennis courts, and trampolines, there were some other guests at the place that were partying so that it made it uncomfortable to be there. Thankfully there was a beautiful resort down the road a ways and we were able to eat dinner on a dock overlooking a pond with lillypads, so we had an enjoyable night. However, we all agreed that it was a bit of a bummer to end the trip with this accommodation and that it being so remote was not a positive thing considering all of the cramped driving we’d already been doing.

We woke up on Saturday morning and planned to grab a quick breakfast and then head out on a hike and see some of the natural wonders in the area. Unfortunately it took us over an hour to receive the breakfast we ordered and as we started driving towards the hike we realized that the current drizzle was only going to become stronger rain and that it was probably best to forego the current plans and head back to Swaziland. At the border crossing the line to get into Swaziland was crazy long, but Sifiso saved the day with his contacts and we didn’t waste any time waiting! We then stopped at Malendellas which was a creative area with fun mosaic sculptures and open fields to play in along with several shops selling goods made by locals.

Creative theater area

Afterwards we thanked Sifiso for a wonderful tour and the boys stayed back at Emafini to do schoolwork while Mom, Dad, and SJ had a date. We had an awesomely memorable safari experience and couldn’t have dreamed of it going much better. However, the reality of moving from place to place every single night and being cramped in a car most of the days left us all in need of some space and rest.