Last night at a debrief session an AIM staff member stood up and announced that we would be leaving for a safari in the morning. Immediate applause and excitement broke out from the World Racer’s. This morning at 6:30 half of us climbed on a Safari vehicle for the hour long drive to the game reserve while the other half climbed into a van. The Land Rover was open on all sides of the stadium seating. Since it is winter here in Swaziland the ride was very cold and very windy, but I loved driving through the African hills.
At the game reserve we climbed into another Land Rover that had nothing but netting to protect us from the animals. Our drive lasted about 3 hours and included sightings of 6 sleepy lazy lions, 6 grazing giraffe, two elephants eating thorny trees, 4 wary wart-hogs, a few herds of impala, a mother rhino and her baby, a hippo family, and lots of birds including vultures and an ostrich. The exciting parts of our trip were when one of the elephants did a mock charge. He started towards our land rover with his ears flared out then he kicked the dirt up and turned the other way. We also got stuck in a ditch of mud. The guys in my truck said we wouldn’t tip but it sure felt like we were close; the truck was on two wheels. The animals in the park are so different from the animals we have in the states. Some of them are down-right ridiculous looking like the giraffe, the wart-hog, and the ostrich. Our creator must have really had a good time when he started making animals. It was so cool to be right next to such amazing and crazy creatures.
