A braai in the park

We had heard so much about Kruger National Park and it was among the must-dos on our list when we came to South Africa. So between match days we decided to make the ceremonial trip.

From our hotel it was about a six-hour drive. We sometimes complain about the steep tax rates at home in America, but now I certainly appreciate our tax dollars going toward interstates and more advanced roads and infrastructure. We had to continuously stop for potholes while travelling on what we would call little two-lane country roads back home, to be avoided at all cost.

We stopped at the Pic 'N Save grocery store in Hazyview, near the lodge were we stayed. It was an absolute zoo at the store, as we tried to pick out meat for our braai that night. I've never seen such a commotion over fresh bread, and I've never seen customers use the bread slicer in the store to slice their bread. Finally, after picking out steaks, sausage and veggies, we were ready to get settled into Kruger Park Adventure Lodge, and get the fire started.

After about an hour of having two lacklustre fires going, we finally broke down and got some charcoal. I will have to say that I was incredibly surprised about how non-girly the ladies were. We were roughin' in like pros. As it turns out, eight of the 12 of us were Girl Scouts growing up and the others had been camping before, so this experience wasn't as foreign to everyone as I thought it may be. We were doing all the things that (typically) our dads and boyfriends do to prepare food for a barbeque. We marinated meat, chopped veggies, aligned sausage and potatoes on kebab sticks, got the fires going and tended to them to ensure that the coals were hot enough to cook our food.

We were all pleasantly surprised to not see any mosquitoes at all, as we were all pretty nervous about malaria. However, we were attacked by ants! There had to be millions of them, I'm sure.

We relaxed by the fire and went around the circle and told stories of each of our favourite memories from the trip. We recapped the good times and laughed and laughed until our stomachs hurt. All in all it was a really fun, chilled-out laidback night.

We stayed in tents that were pretty dang nice - not your everyday Coleman camping tent. Each had a foundation on it, a front porch, and a tiled bathroom attached.

We finally entered Kruger at 4:30 in morning. It was still pitch-dark. Apparently lots of game can be spotted early in the morning. However, we actually ended up having most of our game-spotting luck in the afternoon, right before the sun was going down.

The only animal that we didn't see, which we really wanted to see, was a leopard. However, our encounter with the lions was pretty spectacular, and more than enough to make up for no leopards. As we were leaving the park, we drove right past a huge female lion walking down the side of the road. Several of us screamed at our bus driver to reverse immediately. As we were moving backwards towards the lion, we saw a male lion emerge from the brush, about 20 feet away from our bus. So we were super-close, smack dab in the middle of the two lions. The female was making these odd grunting sounds that we thought may have been some sort of mating call or a cry for help. And we noticed that the male lion was badly limping on his front legs. At first I thought he had only three legs, but then I saw that his front leg was injured.

What with lions and zebras and bees this was an eventful day. Our very own African safari. I have to admit, never in my life have I experienced so much diversity in such a short time. This cannot be described in words. It has to be experienced.