Day 10 and 11

Day 10: Addo.

Mum: 'Damson, stop pulling faces.' Me: 'But I'm trying to eat my breakfast'

Today, day 10, started with a river safari! We got picked up in a jeep full of women on an work trip/holiday (?) and most of whom seemed to be from in or around Durbanville! We were driven down to the river and told to group into pairs for the boats, but, because there was an odd number, I got to ride with the guide. The other women seemed quite nice, but were only there because all the men were playing golf (I kid you not) and were quite loud and giggly which scared off all the birds me, mum and Cheryl were trying to spot. One pair of them had a complete inability to row in a straight line and had to get rescued from the reeds every 3 minutes so the guide suggested I swap with one of them as I've rowed before and had a vague notion of steering. I climbed to the back of my boat while one of the women climbed in the front and we were off again-this time in a straight line! Because the boat I was in had originally been the guide's boat, we had the cooler of drinks and as soon as the other woman realised this, she immediately pulled out a Savannah (cider) and cracked it open on the side of her oar and earned herself the nickname beery-hat. Although I didn't see many birds and I got the joy of sharing with beery-hat, the morning was quite nice, and Mum and Cheryl who were sharing a boat saw lots of kingfishers and even a water monitor (which Cheryl apparently mistook for a crocodile when it jumped out the water near her!).

After the river safari, we went straight into a park safari in Addo. This time we were  with a guide and not self driving, but after our luck the day before, I wasn't expecting to see much especially as the couple we were sharing the jeep with apparently hadn't seen anything at all that morning. We got to the picnic area for a braai lunch and got talking to the couple who were also English. The husband had been researching and planning this trip since February and had only used a rough guide book and trip advisor and happily told us that 'anyone that says you need to use anything else is wrong!' The wife merely said he needed to get a life! And on that, they earned themselves the nicknames Terry and June! Just to add to everything, after they had ensured their flights were cheaper than Mum and Cheryl's, they told us they only wanted to see an elephant cross the road ("you know, like you see on youtube") and maybe if they were lucky, a tiger. We began to wonder if they hadn't seen anything because they'd been looking for the biggest thing in the park and missing anything smaller, and not to mention they were on the wrong continent for tigers!

Anyway, we got back in the jeep, and with me, mum and Cheryl spotting things for everyone, Terry and June's afternoon seemed to perk up a little. Most of what we saw were really cool little birds such as bright yellow weavers, green glossy starlings and the occasional blue-y green malachite kingfisher. We saw a few kudu, several flightless dung beetles and even some distant elephants. I was beginning to wish we had either done another self-drive,  or just left it at our spectacular cheetah sighting when we turned a corner into a massive herd of elephants right next to the road! There were at least 20 or 30 of them from huge bulls, to tiny tiny calfs. We moved slightly forward when one of the biggest bulls suddenly charged at one of the smaller ones, if we had been self-driving we probably would have reversed straight out of there but the guide stayed put and although the bull grazed slowly past our vehicle, he never payed us too much attention more than the rare inquisitive look. We moved forward again a stopped near the matriarch of the group who was keeping an eye on one of the smallest calfs. Almost as soon as she noticed us, she came right over as if she was going to getly headbutt the jeep, but veered off last minute and simply ambled behind us to the other side of the road, with the calf trotting along behind. Terry and June got their youtube worthy moment and the 3 of us felt like the luckiest people alive!

Day 11: Driving to Teniqua.

What a morning coffee shot!

Day 11 started way to early for me at 5am when we got up as we'd decided to try our luck one last time and go to Addo for a dawn self-drive. We got to the park at around 5.45 as the gates said they opened at 5.30, however the guard on the gate told us that you could only self-drive from 7am. No matter, we charmed our way in! Again, I had low expectations - Addo is a humongous park (around 444 700 acres) and although they have more than 600 elephants, they only have 6 lions and 2 cheetah which only served to intensify our disbelief at our luck!

Almost as soon as we were through the gate,  we almost ran over a kudu as it sprang from the bush straight in front of our car. We continued on and saw some more spectacular birds and after 5 or 10 minutes or so, came across a safari jeep that had stopped to watch something. We pulled up behind it to see if we could see anything but nothing was obvious. All of a sudden, something caught my eye and after asking mum to reverse slightly so I could see better, I realised it was a mane. Lying in the bush, sunning its-self in the early morning warmth, barely visible from the road was a massive lion! I'm not even making this up. We watched it snooze for 10 minutes when something else moved near by and another lion sat up! It was the same two we'd seen by the cheetah and after listening to the (very noisy) guide from the jeep, we learnt they were cousins, 4.5 years old and had been together since they were 2. We drove on after they both stood up and wandered almost completely out of sight, into some shaded bush, and we didn't see much after that other than some zebra crossing the road (which we stopped for several 'zebra crossing' jokes and photos!). And we were back to the lodge in time for breakfast!

We had a 4-5 hour drive to our next accommodation, situated between Knysna and Sedgefield, a place called Teniqua Treetops. That's right, Cheryl booked us into a treehouse! Oh yeah! The way we drove to Teniqua took us over Bloukrans bridge, where I did my bungee nearly 2 years ago and I happily pointed it out to mum and Cheryl who immediately felt slightly ill :) We drove on to Tsitsikamma (yeesh I've been here a lot!) and it's national park where we stopped for a quick jaunt along the coast, then back in the car and onwards to Tenquia. There are 8 treehouses here, but they're so far away from each other that you might as well be alone in the forest, which is probably for the best as there aren't really any walls, even in the bathroom! The bedrooms are completely enclosed in canvas but are the only areas that are, the rest of the treehouse either has barriers to stop you falling off, and the bathroom has one semi-transparent wooden fence/wall so you have at least a sliver of privacy (although the other walls are completely open to the forest. The tap water is pumped up from the river, so it's almost coca-cola coloured because of all the tannins in the water from the fynbos. There is a separate tap for drinking water-it pipes rain water! The only downside, is that because there aren't really walls that keep things out, rain spiders and baboon spiders are frequent visitors apparently. Rain spiders only come in when it's about to rain (hence the name) but they're about the size of your hand. Baboon spiders are known elsewhere around the world as tarantulas. I will be sleeping well tonight!