Safari fun

Last weekend we had an off week with no teaching or ministry planned and we were in Africa…so we thought “we should do a little safari.” It was awesome. We drove two hours to the Pilanesburg game reserve. The first day was an adventure only to be found in African proportions. We arrived at the game park and drove around for about 4 hours. We saw lots of stuff the first day. We saw huge bull elephant, tons of impala, zebra, and wart hogs. Probably the coolest thing was seeing a journey of giraffe walk right by our cars. Just 10-15 meters from us. (Sorry I have begun to think in meters instead of feet here recently). We left the game reserve just before dusk and planned on driving to our guesthouse where we were to spend the night. On the way stopped at a Petrol Port to fill up the cars. All the Petrol Ports are full service in South Africa, so we pulled up and instructed the guy to fill them up. We also were a little low in oil in one car and asked them to fill it up as well. To put oil in these cars you have to open the boot (trunk) because the engine is in the back. To keep the boot open he propped it open with a stick. When he tried to close the boot he forgot to take the stick out and he shattered the entire back windscreen on the car. So here we are in the middle of No where Africa and the windscreen on one of our Kombie’s is gone. So we quickly taped a trash bag over it and were given a check from the manager to get it replaced. After this we headed to our guesthouse for the night. By this time it is 6pm and we are getting hungry. It takes us 30 min to find the little dirt road to our guesthouse after we probably passed it 4-5 times. But when we arrived at the house, it was sweet. A French couple Francoise and Alain run the house. We settled in and met their two dogs. A Boerbull and the other dog was a mix between a Boerbull and a Rhodesian Ridgback, they were awesome. By this time it was 7pm and we were starving. We asked Alain what were the closest restaurants open at this time of night. He said only two because we were literally in the middle of no where, at least a 40 min drive to the closest town with normal restaurants. Both restaurants he mentioned were Lodges, almost like country clubs and each place cost R120 per person for dinner. This was going to be the nicest meal we have had in South Africa. It was amazing. Well, it should be for R120 a person ($18). After we ate to the full we left for a short night sleep because we had to wake up at 5:30 am to leave for a guided game drive in the park. We got to the park the next morning at a little after 6 and left for a game drive at 6:30. The game drive was incredible. Our guide Pieter was the man. We ended seeing a white rhino 30 meters away. A black rhino, which he said he only sees a black rhino 2-3 times a month. We saw a journey of giraffe 10 meters from our Bakkie (truck). We then ran into a herd of elephants, 15-20, and they were 5 meters from us. Infact, one mom charged at us because we got too close to her baby…that was a little scary at first, but pretty fun afterwards to recount. From here Pieter said someone had found a pride of lions so we rushed to the sighting point. Once we got there we saw 6 females and one huge male lion. It was incredible. After this we began to head back to the game lodge for brunch. But when we got there one of our Kombies would not start. We tried a rolling start, but it did not jump it off. So the lodge called his mechanic over to help us. After 20 minutes of fiddling with it, he said it was the starter wires and he had it fixed. We were on our way home. On the way home we stopped at a lion farm where we could hold lion cubs, pretty cool. After two hours on the road we made it back to Pretoria and pulled in to our house in Pretoria. Later that night we left to get dinner at Roman’s pizza, and our Kombie would not start again. We opened the boot and looked into the engine and saw that we had a broken belt…what a day for car trouble. In 24 hours we had a broken window, a broken belt, and a bad starter.