Tuesday, July 20th

9:54 am (SA)

          We shared our breakfast with elephants this morning!  After taking guests on rides, they are walked down to the feeding area and watering hole near the restaurant.  When we saw them, everyone jumped up and left their half eaten breakfast to go see the elephants being treated to a huge pile of oranges!  They absolutely love them!  It is so beautiful here and the weather is perfect!  This just might be the best breakfast I've ever had!  Eggs, bacon, cereal, yogurt, toast with strawberry jam, delicious peach/pinapple juice, and elephants to share it with!!!

          I can't wait to see what the rest of the day holds!

10:31 pm (SA)

          Everything is much slower-paced here in South Africa (or maybe they're taking it easy on us for the first day).  Breakfast took two and a half hours and lunch wasn't much shorter, lasting about two hours as well.  We finally got around to taking a nice hike around 4 pm.  Andre led us around the north side of the valley.  We were able to see some giraffe, impala, bush bok, wildebeast, and several vervet monkeys!  They also have huge termite mounds here too!  Some are nearly 3 feet high!  The hike ended with a surprise bonfire and drinks at sunset.  This place is just so wonderful!  After relaxing around the fire, they drove us back to the restaurant for dinner around 7 and we just got back to our rooms now!  All in all, this has been a very nice first day in Africa!

          The two vets also got here today.  Peter has a clinic near Pretoria and does specialty work with cheetahs as well as handling small animal clients.  He's more shy and reserved than the other vet, Brendan, but is really nice once he's comfortable.  Brendan works with many reserves and private parks as well as running a small animal/equine practice in the off season! 

          We also have 2 "game drivers" here at AEBS that have been shuttling us around and sharing their knowledge.  Walter loves to blast Lionel Richie in the combi and self-admitedly is the "garnish in all our pictures"!  Andre was a game driver at Kruger National Park for 9 years before coming to AEBS as the General Manager/Pilot about 3 months ago.  He's super smart and was the one who took us on the hike this afternoon!  It doesn't hurt that he's really cute too!

          Oh!  I almost forgot!  We had a dung-spitting contest up on the airstrip today courtesy of Andre!  Yup, I had impala poop in my mouth!  I promptly lost the contest due to the fact that I consider least amount of time the poop spent in my mouth to be a higher priority than how far I could actually spit said excrement.  It didn't really taste, but the whole thing was still pretty gross, but at least I participated.  Plus, now I have a great Africa story to share when I get home!  As they say here, "TIA (this is Africa)"!