We have been in some remote parts with little or very poor internet connection. Otherwise known as dial up, ughhhh. So it’s been a while since we have been able to post some pictures and let everyone know what we have been up to.
After spending days in the pouring rain in St. Lucia, we decided we must move on. Which is unfortunate because we didn’t get to see all the wonderful things St. Lucia had to offer.
Of course the day we check out there was a break in the rain. We drove onward to a highly recommended park in this area of South Africa. It is now two parks combined into one. Hluhluwe/Imfolozi. The scenery as we drove through the park was beautiful and diverse.
There was no dissapointment in wildlife. We came across impala, warthogs, giraffe, elephant, vervet monkeys, kudu, and nyala. We also saw many species of birds including this interesting little fellow called a Hammer Head.
We got our fill of dung beetle watching here, another fascinating creature. They have to work very hard to roll the dung ball around. They push it with their back legs. Sometimes they put forth a lot of effort to roll their ball up an incline only to have the ball end up rolling back further then where they started.
Rhinos Were The Highlight Of The Park
All white Rhinos in South Africa apparently can be traced back to this park. They were at the brink of extinction and only a few remained in exsistance here.
Our first encounter with a rhino came as a surprise. Jack was looking off to the side as he was driving down a dirt road. I suddenly turned to him with excitement. I warned him that he might want to stop the car before he ran right into a mother and baby in front of us. We both just stared in amazement.
The mother turned her body and head and was now pointed directly at the car. They have been known to charge vehicles. We just had to sit and wait for them to move off the road. The fact that she had a baby made it more of a possibility. This was fine with us, we had all the time in the world to just sit and enjoy watching them. They are such bizarre prehistoric looking creatures. Our rhino sightings for the day came to twenty! It’s nice to know so many are in exsistance here.
Elephants And An African Sunset
We shoud have left the park well before dark to get to our next destination, but we got so consumed with it. Before we knew it nine hours had past since our entry into it. We finished up with some beautiful sunset pictures and watched elephants wander into the twilight. Someone pinch us, is this for real?
Perhaps Leaving In The Dark Wasn’t A Good Idea
We ended up not timing this day very well. We exited through another part of the park. No one had informed us how bad the road was. It was dirt the entire way and full of rocks and some rather large potholes. Our little car rental was not quit equipped for such terrain. We ended up driving for about an hour in the dark in a backwoods area. All we kept thinking was please do not get a flat tire here!
We finally arrived in a very industrial city called Ulundi. Our first welcome to the city was a man lying half into the highway lane. We weren’t sure if he was dead or alive, but there were several people and a police car around him. We later drove past the same area to see the man had been moved to behind a street curb. We’re assuming he was intoxicated and had been put there by the police to sleep it off.
We had no idea where we were, and our guide book only had one suggestion for sleeping. It was an expensive hotel, the only one in town I guess. We decided to drive around for a bit and found a guesthouse called HM Thema’s. It turned out to be an okay place, but had to be one of the hottest rooms we had ever slept in.
At 2am I couldn’t take it anymore, I looked over to see Jack passed out with his mouth wide open, probably trying to get more air. Across the room where we had thrown the thick blanket off the bed I could see something slightly revealed behind it. We had been trying to sleep while a fan lay buried underneath it.