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- Sep 14, 2003
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Is this:
The story is somewhat interesting.
When I was in college, I dated a young woman from South Africa. She would go home every few years to see her grandparents and after we graduated, I had the opporunity to go with her.
We stayed in Krueger game reserve for over a week in some of the government-run camps. We had an AMAZING rate of something like $25/night (compared to $500/night for local safari ranches). The rand (South African currency) had been vastly devalued which meant our money could buy lots more than it would here in the U.S. Since she was South African, we could do everything the way that locals would do it -- instead of the way tourists would do it -- and could get cheaper rates.
One night we went on a night drive and had a spectacular experience. First, we came upon more than one pride of lions. This picture was taken from the top of a running, shaking truck, using a flashlight for light. It's amazing the photo is as sharp as it is.
Further along on the drive, we saw [what we thought] was a rhino. The "rhino" turned out to be a baby elephant, and we slowly came to the realization that we had driven into the middle of a large group of adult elephants with their babies.
I'm not sure if most people know what elephants look like in Real Life (instead of zoos), but African bulls are amazingly HUGE.
Well, we interrupted this group and we had multiple elephants, on both sides of the open-roof truck -- in the pitch black -- charge us. Huge branches snapped in the dark and it sounded like all Hell was breaking loose as the elephants trumpeted as they charged. There were some German tourists with us who nearly soiled themselves out of fear. Everyone fell back in their seats as if the truck surged forward, but it was actually still. This was only a mock charge, and the elephants moved on.
We saw [smelled] hyenas on the same night trip, so it was quite a full trip. I also spent some time in Sodwana on the eastern South African coast diving in shark waters and nearly got stung by a poisonous lion fish...
...but that's another story.
Unfortunately, it's extremely remote and dangerous in some places there, so I kept my cameras pretty low-key.
But I did get a few shots like the image above.
The story is somewhat interesting.
When I was in college, I dated a young woman from South Africa. She would go home every few years to see her grandparents and after we graduated, I had the opporunity to go with her.
We stayed in Krueger game reserve for over a week in some of the government-run camps. We had an AMAZING rate of something like $25/night (compared to $500/night for local safari ranches). The rand (South African currency) had been vastly devalued which meant our money could buy lots more than it would here in the U.S. Since she was South African, we could do everything the way that locals would do it -- instead of the way tourists would do it -- and could get cheaper rates.
One night we went on a night drive and had a spectacular experience. First, we came upon more than one pride of lions. This picture was taken from the top of a running, shaking truck, using a flashlight for light. It's amazing the photo is as sharp as it is.
Further along on the drive, we saw [what we thought] was a rhino. The "rhino" turned out to be a baby elephant, and we slowly came to the realization that we had driven into the middle of a large group of adult elephants with their babies.
I'm not sure if most people know what elephants look like in Real Life (instead of zoos), but African bulls are amazingly HUGE.
Well, we interrupted this group and we had multiple elephants, on both sides of the open-roof truck -- in the pitch black -- charge us. Huge branches snapped in the dark and it sounded like all Hell was breaking loose as the elephants trumpeted as they charged. There were some German tourists with us who nearly soiled themselves out of fear. Everyone fell back in their seats as if the truck surged forward, but it was actually still. This was only a mock charge, and the elephants moved on.
We saw [smelled] hyenas on the same night trip, so it was quite a full trip. I also spent some time in Sodwana on the eastern South African coast diving in shark waters and nearly got stung by a poisonous lion fish...
Unfortunately, it's extremely remote and dangerous in some places there, so I kept my cameras pretty low-key.
But I did get a few shots like the image above.
