Lions, Hogwarts, & Beers
Saturday morning we woke up early, met for breakfast in the
dining hall, and then headed out for our first morning safari. I’m not sure any
of us were prepared for how cold the drive was going to be. I had multiple
layers on, but it still wasn’t enough!
Not too far into our safari, we just happened to come across
two lions. It was seriously the coolest thing. They must have just eaten,
because we were of no distraction to them. They walked right to and past our
jeep, which was quite surreal. These were by far my favorite pictures!
After seeing the lions, we saw several other cool animals
(buffalo, rhino, zebras… which people here pronounce zeb-bra…) but nothing
could quite top the lion experience. Once we got back to the lodge, the sun was
shining and we sat outside to eat lunch. It really cool to be outside at the
lodge because there were often animals nearby that you could see. For example,
there was a pack of zebras and wildebeests hanging out during our lunch. The
animals would sometimes come up near our rooms so you could watch them while
sitting on your back patio.
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| To show how close the animals could get from our rooms |
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| Excerpt from the book I'm reading. It was so peaceful reading outside. |
After reading for an hour, I sat on my patio and called my family so I could tell them all about South Africa adventures. I tried showing them the animals in front of my room, but it was hard for them to see since I was moving about and talking. I was describing all of the animals and said “see, there are some Hogwarts”. Meagan paused a minute and then she said “You mean warthogs? Amy, Hogwarts are something in Harry Potter...” Haha. I don’t know anything about Harry Potter, but I am pretty good at flipping my words around. I’ve notoriously done that since I was a child. I’m just glad I did it with my family and not my coworkers…
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| Hogwarts :) |
The boys texted me when they were done playing tennis and
let me know they were at the pool. I came back to the pool for just a few
minutes and chatted with them. While they were drinking beer and enjoying the
sun, I went back to my room and showered so I could make a manicure appointment
I had made at the spa for 5:45 pm. I figured if the guys were doing “guy
things”, I should go do something girly. We were doing dinner in the bush that
night so I planned to just meet them by the jeeps to head out to the bush once
I finished.
The girl that did my nails was a sweet girl. After talking,
I learned that she is the oldest of 4 girls, that we are the same age, and that
she is also single. We definitely bonded, and I took the opportunity to ask her
about her live in South Africa. She told me that every morning she taxis to Sun
City and then from there a shuttle picks up all of the workers and she does the
same thing each evening. She said she doesn’t date much because men around
there aren’t trustworthy / loyal and she just feels like it’s not worth the
effort. She also told me that she dreams of living in America. I asked her if
she’d ever been and she said no but she likes what she sees on TV. Her name was
Puseleto (pronounced Poo-See-Let-O). She said that it was custom there to name
your child after an event. For example, if it was raining when the child is
born, maybe their name means “rain” (in their language). I asked her what her
name meant and she said that her mom named her after a stillbirth child she had.
She couldn’t really articulate the meaning, but I took it to mean joy out of
pain or beauty out of ashes. Puse (that was what people called her for short,
or Cookie, she said, because she’s cute) said that there was a common male name
in their culture that literally means rubbish. How sad to be a child with such
a horrible meaning of a name and much more sad that a parent would give their
child that name! I really enjoyed my time with Puseleto and felt like we were
friends by the time I left. She wasn’t impressed with my short nails and dried
out hands, but I think I made up for it because I bought the cuticle oil she
was selling. Mostly just because I liked her. I definitely don’t use it (but I
probably should…).
Once I finished at the spa I walked over to the front
entrance of the lodge to join the boys for our ride over to dinner in the bush.
At this point, the sun had set. We jumped on the jeep and on our way there a
bunch of elephants were blocking the road we needed to take. It was really dark
so my pictures didn’t turn out well but it was an exciting surprise.
When we got to the dinner, people greeted us with music and
a warm brandy-like drink. The scenery was quite awesome and better than any of
us had expected. Not to mention, the food was so good! I ate way more than
necessary! We also had performances throughout the night, and I just loved
every moment of it.
Once we got back from dinner, it was still relatively early.
Justin jokingly tried to convince us to go back to the casino but given that
most of us don’t gamble we talked him into playing a game at the lodge. We
played 30 seconds, which was sort of like Taboo, and it was a lot of fun! So
many laughs.
After games, the boys decided they wanted to play MORE
tennis. At this point, I was ready for bed (I think it was midnight or 1 am by
now).
I walked over to the courts with them, took a few pictures, and headed to
bed as we had another early morning game drive.
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| Never trust a car full of boys... |
Sunday morning we met for
breakfast, headed out on the drive, and packed up and drove back to
Johannesburg (a little over a 2 hour drive). It was an incredible experience, and I am forever grateful for
the memory.
When we got back to Johannesburg, we basically hit the ground running with work. We had a full work week but managed to sneak in another game night and get Bret an Irish car bomb before we left (or the South African version of one...). He had never had one so we had jokingly said we'd make sure to get him one before the trip was over. It was surprisingly a bigger task than we thought as not many places had Guinness. |
| Our last night before heading back to London! My clothes officially don't fit now. |
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