Yee-haw! I'm on an ELEPHANT!!

  

This weekend was AMAZING! We rented a car again and went to Kwantu Elephant Reserve and Game Park. The elephant reserve was my favorite!! We got to spend an hour leaning about elephants, riding them and feeding them. It was so so fun! My guide was great. The first thing I asked him was how long he had been working with elephants. He told me it was his first day:-) Really funny guy from Zimbabwe. He had really been working with elephants for five years. I cannot even attempt to say or spell his name or the elephant I rode. I can tell you that my elephant was a female and the meaning of her name was beard! Not a very attractive name for a lady if you ask me. The elephant was a lot harder than I was expecting. Its spine was so big, it didn't make the ride very comfortable. I'm still sore from it, but it was enjoyable none the less. 

   

The elephants did a little show for us. They walked in a  circle, did all these cute poses and stuff. They responded so well. Just like you would tell a dog to sit, roll over and shake. These elephants did the exact same. It was so cool. Elephants have an extremely good memory, making them smart creatures. I was a little nervous feeding them at first because they had their trunks moving all around asking for food. They would breathe really hard or sigh at certain points and kinda spit on me! I won't lie it was a little gross, but so cool to be feeding them at the same time. I fed their trunk and their mouths. The mouth wads really gross looking with its big nasty tongue. They did have nice teeth though. Elephants have 6 different sets of teeth within their lifetime and can live up to 70 years old. 

  

After we finished with the elephant reserve we drove twenty minutes to the game park. They had snack, tea and coffee waiting on us. We then loaded this open air jeep and took off on a ride through the wild with our guide named Patrick. Patrick has been working in game parks for over 15 years. When we entered the gate he said "Welcome to my office." He drove us around showing us the wildlife and telling us a lot of information about them. We got to see all kinds of buck, zebra, rhino, wildebeest, and elephants. I was a little disappointed that we didn't see a hippo or or any lions. We did see some lions and two tigers, but they were caged up in the rehabilitation center. Not as exciting as seeing them in the wild, but cool either way. There was a family that was on the tour with us. They had a little girl with a bright yellow giraffe hat on. The lions got up and followed her around everywhere, growling and hissing at her, like they were going to tear her to shreds if they got through the electric fence. It was actually pretty scary even though they were behind the fence. One neat thing I learned about lions is that they sleep 80 percent of the day to conserve their energy. A famous bushman saying, "You are never alone in the bush. If you see one animal, there are ten more with their eyes on you." 

After the game drive Kwantu had a surprise presentation for us. It ended up being about snakes. Simon, the snake expert talked to us about snakes and gave us information to teach us not to be afraid of them. He spoke the whole time with a python around his neck. It was neat to hear all the facts about snakes. At the end I held it along with a few others watching. 

 

On Sunday we drove up the Sunshine Coast and spent part of the day in Bathurst, a small town on the way to Port Alfred. We did the tourist thing, rambling around in all the shops buying souvenirs. When we finished we went to the beach to hang out. We were going to tan and swim, but the wind was too bad. The sand was blowing everywhere. Crazy how it hurts when the sand hits you, feels like needles stabbing into you. I couldn't imagine being out in an actual sandstorm, would be terrible. On our way back we stopped at this famous flight school and saw some cool planes. The flight school use to be an Airforce base. People come from all over to learn how to fly because classes are really cheap. After this we headed to the grocery store to get food for the week. We loaded up because we had a car to take it home in, instead of having to carry it like usual.