20091220 – Rhino and Lion Reserve

The goal for the day was to visit another game park and then to travel to the Johannesburg airport to complete the first leg of our flight to Rome. After Kruger, we knew that all other game parks would pale in comparison to its vast size. But bigger is not always better. Kruger is so large that you will often have trouble finding the animals that you want to see. You can spend hours simply driving around, and only catch glances at the ubiquitous Impalas. With this in mind, Jeremy and I decided that we would visit one of the smaller parks. The Rhino and Lion reserve promised Lions, Leopards, Tigers, and more. And because the animals are kept in enclosures (large, but still enclosures), you have a much better chance of seeing them.

And we did! I finished up the “Big 5”, and saw Leopards and Lions. The Leopards were spectacular. They came up right next to the car and we spent some time just sitting there and looking at them.

The park also had some separate zoo type enclosures. This was definitely a negative aspect of the park. In zoos, animals don’t always look happy, but at least you can tell that the zoo is trying to make the content. Here, the cages were pretty beat and it gave me the impression that the animals were just being taken care of as they should be.

After about 4 hours, we finished up the park and started on the road to Johannesburg. I used my awesome map reading skills to devise a better route to the airport, and Jeremy used his amazing “Brad Impersonation” skills to drive the car. (The car was in my name, but Jeremy was driving). To avoid major difficulties, Jeremy gave back my drivers license. We figured that we could get out of an expired license, but not a straight up lie.

The drive was hassle free, and we were happy to arrive at the airport. The rest is pretty boring. We hung out at the airport for a while and worked through some planning for our stay in Rome. We found some free tours, worked up a rough itinerary, and finally were able to check into the airport. We sat around for a bit longer, changed our paper rand into Euros, spent the rest of our rand, and then got in the plane at 8:45 pm. This portion of our trip takes us to Cairo where we have a 4 hour layover. The next flight will take us to Rome.