Hakuna Matata means it’s great not being dinner

We’ve been here over two weeks now and have seen some interesting things. African fish eagles courting by latching talons and spiraling towards the ground in a “death spiral”. Teenage elephants mock fighting in a river. A hyena that stalked our hut because it thought we would throw it bones. A herd of 250+ buffalo in the road for a good 20 minutes. But the lions chasing the warthog are hands down the winner.

Day 4 in the park. We are driving to Satara (our base camp) from Skukuza (the main rest camp for the park). It’s evening about 5:30, 30 minutes before the gates close to the camp that will essentially shut us outside for the night, or at least get us a good yelling to as they let us in. We see this warthog come tearing out of the bush and streak down the road as a lioness explodes from the roadside takes a swipe at the warthog, misses and then does a cartwheel onto the road. As the warthog hauls it down the tar road, the rest of the lion pack (seven in all) saunter onto the tar road right in front of us and proceed to lay down completely unconcerned about the cars on either side of them. After 10 minutes or so, something in the bush peaks their interest and six of the seven fan out on one side of the road, crouched and tails twitching. A lone female stayed on the road as a stop gap in case their query decided to make an end run.

I wish I could say this story ended with a nice gory kill from the lions but they eventually strolled off into the bush to find another appetizer – Pumba was spared to hog another day. But, the lioness cartwheel definitely wins for animal entertainment so far, and we even made it back to camp with five minutes to spare.

Finally in Africa. Have spent the last few days in the main rest camp here in Kruger getting paperwork signed, finding our equipment, etc. Kruger is a pretty wild place. You can sit at a restaurant and have a latte, drink a glass of wine, and have a pizza while watching hippos play in the river. Stark contrast indeed. It really hits your brain on a different level that you are in one of the wildest parks on the planet but can have just about any modern convenience that you want in the rest camps. It's good for blogging but not quite as "wild" as I expected. That said, you drive out the gates and see giraffes, baboons, kudu, impalas, and warthog and you know you're in the bush.

So Allison and I are off to our home for the next several months. We leave the main rest camp (Skukuza) today and head to Satara, the rest camp that we will be living in. Its about a two hour drive north and home to the largest concentration of lions in the park. So that should make for some interesting field work. Looking forward to getting into work. All of the runup and paperwork, etc. has kind of gotten me down and I'm ready to get settled and down to work. Will post again in a couple of weeks when we are back to internet access. Hopefully will have some good pics by then. Cheers!

Now we're down to the last minute craziness. Packing, re-packing, and having mild panic attacks wondering what in the world I've gotten myself into going half-way across the world to live in a tent and chase animals around the bush. I CAN'T WAIT!