Day 2: June 25 - Pafuri, South Africa

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I've arrived!! After an 11+ hour flight from London to Johannesburg (during which I slept an unimpressive 5 hours) we arrived at the airport bleary-eyed and late, but excited. My poor roommate's bag was left behind in London, so she's borrowing some clothing from me for now. (The same thing happened during my trip to Central America last year! Soon no one is going to want to be my roommate!)

From Johannesburg, we had a 2 1/2 hour flight on a 15-seater plane, and then a drive to the lodge. We're at Pafuri, a region in Kruger National Park, located in the northeast corner of South Africa: We arrived 3 hours later than scheduled, so we were starving and thirsty, but ready for our adventure! On the drive from the airport we were already seeing animals, and had to stop a zillion times to break out the cameras. I started indulging my anal tendencies immediately, and wrote down everything we saw on every trip...

Spotted on the drive from the air strip:
- Nyala (antelope only found at Pafuri park)
- Impala (another antelope)
- African Fish-Eagle
- Red-Billed Buffalo Weaver
- Hornbill

When we arrived at the lodge, we were met by a group of 5 elephants wandering around the riverside and the brush underneath our huts (which are on stilts.) It's so exciting to be here, I can't express how happy I am! Here is the first elephant we spotted, across from the main lodge: The other four elephants were right underneath our hut - here's a photo from our deck:
(Note: My new camera wasn't on a the correct settings this first day, so many of my photos didn't come out very well - and the night-shots were ridiculously laughable. But don't worry, there are plenty more where these came from.)

Our guide, Godfrey, is fabulous, and I don't know how he spies some of the animals through the growth. Tonight, we're heading out for an evening / sunset drive, and then we'll be doing what's called "spotlighting", which is scoping out the brush with a light, looking for the reflection of animal eyes. This is the best way to find the nocturnal animals.

Night drive:
- African Civet
- Three-banded courser (apparently the group before us were avid birders and have been searching for this bird for 3 days... we found it on our first trip out.)
- Large-spotted genet
- Scrub hare

The weather was warm when we arrived - probably about 75 degrees - but as I write this in the evening, it's definitely cooled off significantly. Since we're in lodges, there is no heat, but they give us a hot water bottle which is keeping my toes warm - it's divine!! The sound of frogs and a few crickets is ridiculously loud. I'm glad I'm tired, so I will be able to sleep through it! Tomorrow morning, we get up at 5:30am for a 6am game drive - and I'm sure I'm going to freeze my tush off. The safari trucks have nice thick blankets, though, which is awesome. Hopefully I can wear about 10 of them. Right now, I'm simply excited about the prospect of sleeping horizontally... for the first time in three days... G'night!
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