A lot has happened in the past two weeks! We went on our excursion last week and were gone from Tuesday until Sunday. We flew on Mango airlines into Durban and then immediately got into vans and drove about an hour and half to the St. Lucia Estuary. We went on a two hour boat ride and saw crocodiles, a few monkeys, and a lot of hippopotamuses and birds! It was incredible watching such huge animals in their own environment.

After, we drove about another hour or two to Hluhluwe. We stayed at a small place called the Sand Forest Lodge. There were zebras, wildebeests, and other deer-like animals roaming around where we stayed. We ate dinner on a semi-open porch and watched a zebra eat his dinner close by. We left the next morning at 5:30am to go to the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game reserve for a safari. Our safari vehicles picked us up from the lodge and we drove about half an hour to the reserve.

The first animals we saw were giraffes. They run very funny! We saw zebras, nyalas (another deer look a like), buffalo, rhinoceroses, and even lions. Lions are really rare to see at this game reserve so that was really amazing that we were able to see them. Our guide was tracking their footprints and was able to tell if they were there recently. We thought he was just playing around with us until we actually found them! I decided that my favorite safari animal is a rhino. I was amazed at how beautiful they are in their natural environment.

After the safari we drove three hours back to Durban and spent two nights staying at our beach front hotel. It was too bad that it was not good weather the entire time. The Indian Ocean was beautiful though and the waves were pretty big. We ate at an Indian restaurant one night and that was my first time experiencing Indian food. I am a big fan now and I am planning my next visit! We also ate the Havannah Grill and I had the best fillet I have ever had. We went to an Indian craft market and visited the largest mosque in the Southern hemisphere.

On Friday morning we got back on the vans and drove another three hours to our resort (Orion) in the Drakensberg Mountains. It was absolutely beautiful. On Saturday we went hiking in the mountains and most of us went swimming in one of the freezing streams. After we got back, eight of us went horseback riding along the mountains back near the resort. The mountains are spectacular and enormous. They are the highest mountain range in Southern Africa.

The entire week was amazing and it was incredible to see the Big 5, the Indian Ocean, and the beautiful mountains!

-Carrie-Ellen