After a grueling fifteen hour flight from Atlanta to Johanesburg, our family headed up to two private game reserves near the Kruger National Park to go on a safari.
Coming in, my expectations knew not what to think. I hoped to see an elephant or two, lions, leopards, rhino, and well, really no idea from there. What I saw was absolutely, nothing short of breathtaking (sometimes literally).
My uninformed self was quickly rectified when we arrived at the first camp, eating lunch and overlooking a river. We saw a herd of impala, some waterbuck, a troop of baboons, and a herd of elephants. (Insert jaw drop here).
On our first game drive (not actually called a safari either, go figure), I fell in love with this place. The scenery, the animals, the people. Simply everything about it. Riding in one of the open air land cruisers, through scenery that I had only ever seen on TV, just blew me away. It's hard to describe the overwhelming feelings of majestic freedom that you are undertaking.
Before our first game drive, we had lunch and of course, stopped by the bar. Around the bar, there was a scoreboard of sorts. Essentially, it was a list of all the animals that you could see on a game drive and amount of points you would earn for seeing each. There were only two things listed on the board that weren't animals, first "The Kill" (pretty self explanatory, I think) and "The Big Five." Now everyone else around seemed to pretend to know what The Big Five were, but I was plain clueless. And frankly, too embarrassed to ask.
As the days went on, I begin to gather hints from everyone talking about looking for them. First off, it is a compilation of five animals - the elephant, leopard, lion, buffalo, and rhino. Moreover, they were grouped together because they are considered the most dangerous animals to hunt on foot.
The Elephant - Not surprisingly, it's the largest and heaviest of the land animals. They travel in herds, where there is a Matriarch who rules over and makes the decisions. We saw a heard of close to fifty elephant, and being surrounded as they lazily grazed and continued to eat and eat and eat. Most elephants eat around 300kg of vegetation per day, then poop out 200kg of it! Don't let their giant mass and slow grazing full you, when they want to run or fight, you better get out of the way.
The Leopard - The best way to describe them is as elusive; but they stalk animals, we stalk them, and eventually we saw one. Though we stalked it for hours, we never saw this sly creature make a kill - though we got to see them pee A LOT (aka scent-marking their territory).
The Lion - The lion is considered to be the king of the beasts, maybe that comes from their manes, or maybe because of the Lion King. We were able to see quite a few lions, lounging in the sun, eating an impala kills, cubs playing (aka annoying) their parents because they lives in prides. Normally there are two to five lionesses (sisters) in a pride, with cubs (SO CUTE) born around the same time. Males are constantly fighting for control of their prides, as they spend their time separately from the females, but there is always another male or two on the sidelines, ready to take over.
The Buffalo - Though it's my mom's favorite animal by far, it is considered by far the most dangerous of the Big Five. They seem harmless, grazing, traveling in large herds, and sipping at the watering hole - but, their tides can change in an instant. And when they charge, well let's just say, don't even bother trying to run.
The Rhino - This quickly became my favorite animal, because well, they're idiots and it's pretty funny. The first night, it was approaching dark and we were watching some lions lounge around, when along a trail came three rhino. As soon as they saw the lions, they stopped. And literally just stood there. Confused. Our guide explained that the rhinos had a plan to go to the watering hole, but upon seeing the lions, they couldn't cross their path, so they literally didn't know what to do. And stood there, like fat little unicorns.