Safari

We recently went on a Safari in South Africa.  The Safari was in Kruger National Park. My favorite parts were the elephants, zebras, and hippos.

When you see an elephant in a photograph, it looks big.  Maybe the size of a car.  But, when you see an elephant standing six feet away from you…well, the older ones are easily twice the size of a car.  Our guide, Chris, told us about the horrors of elephants.  Say that someone walked into a restaurant and just came and sat at your table.  You don't know them.  So you don't want them there.  Elephants are sort of like that.  If you go to close to an elephant, they WILL flip your car over and smash it like you smash a small soda can.  It was really interesting, though, to see the elephants up close.

Before coming to Africa, I had only seen zebras in photographs, films, zoos, and those charts in classrooms with all the letters of the alphabet.  We saw lots of zebras on the safari, which I enjoyed.  When you look close at zebras, they actually have some brown in them, as well as black and white.  It was great seeing zebras, even if they were far away.

Hippos are the animals that have killed the most people in Africa.  I'm not saying this to scare anyone. I'm just stating the fact.  The few times we passed hippos, they didn't seem too dangerous. They did have HUGE pink jaws. They were really fat and heavy. But, they didn't seem too threatening.  In the daytime, hippos mostly slept in the water.  In the night, however, they were eating up on land.  I guess I expected hippos to seem mellow and small.  They were huge roaring animals, though.  Fun to see in real life… as long as you're not too close.