[Kate] A Surprise Encounter

By the fourth day of our safari experience (and last full day), by had seen a large chunk of what there was to see.  We had seen leopards (seven different ones at different times, including two little cubs), lions (although they were mostly sleeping), giraffes (Grace's favorite), warthogs (Cannon's favorite), elephants, and more of the main attractions.

On the game drive on the eve before our departure, we started off looking at the usual stuff (various kinds of antelopes and birds), but then, at the edge of the river, we saw a male lion standing up.  We went and investigated, and saw two male lions and a female, but they were all lying down at that point.  After a short stop we set off again and ran into a big group of giraffes.  We got really close, and even at one point got out of the vehicle to approach a little bit nearer.   When we did finish with them, we started driving farther than we ever had before, and Jason (our guide) didn't tell us where we where going.

This isn't that unusual.  Guides often don't tell visitors what animals they're going to in order to avoid disappointment if they can't find the animal after all.  By this time the sun was lowered in the sky, but it was still white bright, although light was sure to start dropping soon.

We emerged from the trees and shrubbery where we usually searched and made our way out to great sprawling plains, with only the occasional plant besides grass.  Even though we saw a lot of animals, including a large group of elephants drinking water, we didn't stop.  Jason told us that the animal we were after was very light dependent.

A little while later, he told us the animal was diurnal, meaning it was active during the day.  The only two diurnal hunters we could think of were wild dogs and cheetahs.  Jason informed us that we were going to see the latter.

This was quite unusual.  Cheetahs are endangered animals, and therefore rare.  We were told that the odds of us seeing one was very low.  My parents, who had been on a eight day safari years ago, had never seen one in the wild.

Most of the reserve was trees and shrubbery, something cheetahs dislike.  They like wide open plains, so they can easily run at their top sped without a lot of obstacles.  So it made sense that we had come to this little corner of the reserve (the reserve was the area of land that we were allowed to drive around on).

After a few more minutes of fast driving, some parked jeeps came into views.  A few second later we saw what they were looking at.  A cheetah was perched on top of a dead log, looking out over the plains.

It was a really beautiful and dangerous looking animal, with the black markings on its face, its lean legs, and of course it's famous spots.

This is the cheetah on top of the log.

This is a closer look at the cheetah's face.

We stayed with the cat for a while, even after it left the log.  It walked through the tall grass, and sometimes we (that is to say, I) had trouble finding it.  After a couple of minutes, the cheetah escaped us by walking out of the reserve's boundaries (marked by a road).  We watched it walk away from us and into more grass.

Seeing the cheetah was a great experience, especially since we had had been told seeing one was unlikely.  It was one of my favorite moment of the whole safari.

[George/Cannon] My Favorite Safari Animal

I was really looking forward to the safari that we were going to do.  And when we did it I was not disappointed.  We saw loads of things, including lions, leopards, lots of antelope, and more.  But I only have one favorite.  My favorite animal is the warthog.

A warthog

For some reason I just love warthogs.  One of the reasons is I just think that they look awesome.  They're both cute and ugly.  I love them.  Also It is so funny to just watch warthogs run, because when when warthogs run they're tails and neck hair just stick straight up. (See Below).  This is especially funny when there are piglets, and they're running too.

A warthog running

For all of those reasons I love warthogs more than antelope, lions, leopards, and everything else we saw.

[Grace] Traumatic African Animal Encounter (Spoiler: I Survive)

Like most other people I've met, I consider myself an animal lover. When I was four years old I had a goldfish named Bubbles (RIP Bubbles) and now I have my gorgeous labradoodle Rugby (who is back home in the United States). So when we got to Africa, one of the things I was most excited about was seeing all the African animals. On the plane from Dubai to Cape Town, I even watched an African Cats documentary (10/10 would recommend). I now want to adopt a little cheetah cub.

However...my first experience with an animal on this continent didn't quite go as planned.

Out first day in Cape Town we stayed around the city, and the next day we started a drive along the coast of South Africa. Even though it was a slight detour, our family went to the Cape of Good Hope. The drive there was very pretty, and along the way we saw signs warning us about various wild animals, mainly baboons (foreshadowing).

Once we make our way to the Cape, we park our car and start getting ready to walk up a nearby lighthouse on top of a hill. I stayed in the backseat and everyone else got out of the car (which turned out to be a great mistake on my part). I was changing out the camera battery on our Nikon and so I was alone in the car - for a while at least. 

A movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention and I looked up. The door across the backseat from me had been left ajar, and a baboon had opened the car door and proceeded to climb inside. 

In case you didn't know, baboons are not cute. I'm all for monkeys-and-the-like, but only if they're adorable and non-threatening. Baboons are neither adorable nor non-nonthreatening. And I was not pleased to come face-to-face with a baboon in the backseat of our rental car.

Picture of a baboon that was taken shortly after this incident.

My first thought was Should I kick it? Almost as if the baboon could read my mind, he bared his teeth at me. I nixed the kicking idea and moved onto Plan B: yell.

"Baboon! There's a baboon in the car!" As I yelled, the baboon made its way to the passenger seat where I could hear it tearing into our stash of roadtrip snacks. And while a Pringle-less car ride would be tragic, I was more concerned with being murdered and/or maimed by this baboon.  

Some other member of my family managed to open the passenger door, trying to get the baboon out. The rest of the family was at the back of the car, but they could see a little through the open trunk. Once the passenger door was the open, the baboon grabbed his prize -- aka all our road trip snacks -- and made a beeline for the open trunk of the car, making his escape. My siblings, standing at the back of the car, were not too excited to come face-to-face with the baboon, but they managed to escape unscathed.

At this point, the baboon thinks he is home free, and sits down a few feet away from the car, our bag of food with him. My mother was not going to stand for this behavior. If you know my mom, you'll know that she greatly values her food. Which is why my mom proceeded to approach the baboon . . . and then kick it, trying to get our food back.

Obviously, if there is ever a zombie apocalypse, Kara Beal is the person you want to be stuck with. In stark comparison, I was cowered in the backseat, still taking deep breaths from my short encounter with the wild animal. Only one of us thinks quickly in times of crisis, and you can use your personal judgement to figure out who that is.

My mom's animal abuse meant that we regained a few of our lost food items. Most important was a metal kitchen knife that had been in the bag with all our snacks. I already fear baboons when they aren't armed - if they had any form of weapons, I would be distinctly terrified. In addition to the knife, we recovered a can of Pringles, a peanut granola bar and a bag of Lays potato chips (we like potato chips). However, the bag of Lays had the corner torn open from the baboon. The hole was small, and it was clear the baboon hadn't actually eaten any of the potato chips. Or, at least, that's what we like to tell ourselves because we ate the bag of chips anyway.

The baboon himself, running away from us with OUR apple. RIP apple.

Afterwards, I had a hard time recovering. I had not eaten a lot of food for the past couple of days, due to food poisoning I picked up in Nepal, and I was, mentally and emotionally, quite weak. I spent the next half an hour taking steadying breaths and being uncomfortable every time I saw another baboon along the path we were walking.

In conclusion:



















Baboons are dangerous and attracted by food.

[Kate] Elephants: A Comparison

When we were in Laos we did a half-day elephant experience (no riding).  Mostly we feed the elephants and walked around with them.  But more recently we went to an animal park in South Africa, which has a variety of wildlife in it.  It's set up so you drive around on roads and see the animals (it's against the rules to get out of the car).  We got pretty up close to many, many elephants that day, including some truly adorable babies.

The difference between the two experiences (or one of them, at any rate) was that they we saw different types of elephants: Asian elephants and African elephants.

To tell the difference between them, one often looks at the ears.  African elephants have ears large ears shaped like the continent Africa, while Asian elephants have much smaller and shorter ears, never reaching higher than the neck.  This is because African elephants live in hotter areas than most Asian elephants, who tend to live in cooler jungly areas.  African elephants use the large surface area of their ears to keep them cool, using them as fans.

African Elephant Ear

Asian Elephant Ear

Another difference is size.  African Elephants, on average, are about 13223 pounds or 5952 pounds (depending on whether they are a bush or forest African elephant--the bush elephants are the larger ones).  But in contrast Asian elephants range from about5952 pounds to only about 11905 pounds.  African elephants are also taller.

An image of African and Asian elephants next to each other.

It'll be cool to see more African elephants in the upcoming days and see what else we discover about them.

[Seth] The good and bad about traveling in Southern Africa

We have spent the last week traveling along the southern coast of Africa.  We started by spending a couple of wet days in Cape Town (happy for them that it was raining as they need it, but we didn't end up seeing much of the city because of the weather).  We then drove south to visit the Cape of Good Hope.  Here we were accosted by a hungry baboon, but you will have to wait for Grace's blog post for the details on that encounter.

While the Cape of Good Hope is actually not the southern tip of Africa, it is still pretty spectacular

We then headed east away from Cape Town towards Port Elizabeth.  Along the way, we stopped to see some penguins at Simon's Town.  The are 2,000 to 3,000 penguins that live here in this colony.  We spent last Christmas in the Galapagos Islands where you can actually see penguins in the Northern Hemisphere (just barely, as the Galapagos straddle the Equator) so the kids were excited to say they have now seen penguins in both hemispheres.

Our ultimate destination was Port Elizabeth where my parents are serving a mission for the Mormon church.  Happily, the drive to Port Elizabeth is along the Garden Route, which traverses an ecologically diverse coastal area with numerous lagoons and lakes dotted along the coast. It includes towns such as Knysna and George, the Garden Route's largest city and where we stayed our first night.  In George, we met up with my parents and we had to take a picture of the three Georges in George.  

George Max, George Seth and George Cannon in George

The scenery, particularly when the road traveling along the coast, was stunning and reminded us quite a bit of the coast of the South Island of New Zealand.  Here are some of our favorite places along the Garden Route:

Wilderness Beach outside of George

Suspension bridge over Storms River mouth

Tsitsikamma National Park coastline

Jumping off dunes in Sardinia Bay outside of Port Elizabeth

Once we arrived in Port Elizabeth, we got a chance to visit Addo Elephant National Park where we had an unusual traffic jam.

My parents' car blocked by an elephant

All in all, our time in South Africa has been great – with one significant exception.  We have been constantly warned both before we arrived and while we are here about the need to be concerned about crime.  When you stay at the hotels, they warn you not to go out at night.  The houses and buildings are secured like miniature fortresses.  The newspapers are full of stories about house break-ins and robberies.  It makes it very hard to ever feel safe.  When we arrived in Port Elizabeth, the caretaker of the property that we are staying in handed me a key ring with half a dozen keys – each that locked a different part of the house.  There is not only a locked front door at most houses, but also an additional metal gated front door and often a driveway gate.  Many of the houses even have barbed wire above the high walls that surround the homes.  

House with gate, barbed wire, and alarm and beware of dog signs

As a result, you are always paranoid – particularly after dark.  Perhaps you eventually get used to it, but I think it would be very hard to live is a place that by its very architecture is constantly telling you that you are in danger.

[George/Cannon] Aquaventure

While in Dubai we stayed at a very big resort called Atlantis.  I was very much looking forward to this because I was told by my dad that this hotel was so big it even has a giant water park called Aquaventure.  Below is a list of all of the attractions.

The first this that we did was called the Lazy River.  This is where you float around on inflatable tubes and go on rapids.  The river stretches all around the park, so it's the most common method of transportation.  You just head to the river, grab a tube, and off you go.

There were 3 water slides in the park.  Poseidon's Revenge, The Leap of Faith, and the Slitherine.  We only went one one in the three days we were there.  The one that we chose was the Slitherine.  This was a simple waterslide just spiraling down.  I enjoyed it immensely but wish it could of been a bit faster.  This was not our first choice for a waterslide however.  We tried to go on Poseidon's Revenge but I was too light.  The reason that I was too light was that there was a loop halfway through the ride.  I was low-key glad about this because the slide started out at about a 70° angle.  And the way that you start the slide is you get into a coffin like thing, and then they remove the floor so you just plummet (See below).

This is the coffin like thing that you stand in.  To start the ride the floor is removed and you fall.

The last one was the Leap of Faith.  You slide down at another 70° angle and then enter a shark tank.  You probably can't see the sharks but still it would be cool.  This ride was closed most of the time we were there.  I am really sad I didn't do it.

This is the Leap of Faith.  You can see the shark tank beneath.

The second type of ride they had were the tube rides.  On these you had one of the inflatable tubes, and you ride down a slide.  There were many of these, and they were all basically the same.  However there was one were you could go through a shark tank.  This one was really cool, but it had a long line and wasn't really worth the wait.  But it is an amazing experience.

There is one more type of ride.  You get in a big inter tube and you can go into this thing like a half pipe, were you go up the wall then fall back down and go to the other wall.  This was really fun.  The two rides like this were Anaconda, and Zoomerango.  The Zoomerango was very short and all it really had was a big drop at the end.  The Anaconda was much better, and with much more half pipe action (I don't know if that's a thing but let's assume it is).

Those were all the rides at Aquaventure.  It was really fun and I wish we could have spent more time there.

[Kate] A List of Luxuries

There are lots of great, breathtaking things about traveling, but there are also tons of downsides, especially for long trips.  Some of these we anticipated coming into the trip, some we didn't.  Here is a list of some of the things we miss (and often think about) about normal life.

A Room to Myself.  It's kind of crazy traveling with your family 24/7, and getting time to myself is more a luxury than a constant.  This is especially a problem with my singing, because as many of you might know, I have a habit of singing incessantly, which has inspired a wide variety of irksome (for me) rules on our family (no singing in the car, no singing in stores, no singing in restaurants, no singing on boats, no singing on chairlifts, no singing on gondolas, no singing on airplanes, etc).  Now, without my own room, I don't have somewhere to retreat when Cannon (normally the enforcer of these rules) vindictively forces me into silence.

Homemade Food.  Literally eating out for every meal, or scrounging to get a couple of crackers or an apple is fine for a week, or even a month, but at that point it gets tiresome, and we all feel a bit of a mess.  All of us crave different kinds of food, but we really want some "real" food.  I personally have been longing for sausage kale soup, breakfast hash (for dinner), and ravioli lasagna.

Rugby.  We all miss our puppy!  We have a few pictures sent to us on occasion, and we all are super excited to see her when we return to America in the fall before school.

This is Rugby on a trail near our house in California.

Time to Sleep In.  Okay, this one might be just me.  But I really, really, really miss sleeping in late.  My version of sleeping in doesn't seem to be the same as the rest of my family, and eight in the morning isn't rest luxury for me.  I want at least nine o'clock.

Talking to my Friends.  This is a given, because of course I miss all of my friends back in California.  I can still talk to them, but sometimes it can be hard with the WiFi getting spotty often.  Which leads me to my next point...

Reliable Wifi Connection.  In foreign countries, my normal American SIM card doesn't work, and we only buy SIM cards for each country for the parents, which makes sense.  But often we don't have reliable WiFi connection, which can be frustrating for homework and for talking to friends.

Traveling is great, and this really is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  But there are definitely some hard parts, however fun the rest of it is!