chillax

Can I tell you how much I hate the word “chillax”?  It really grates on my nerves when people use it.  I think it is such a stupid, stupid word and if someone says they are “chillaxin” my blood pressure literally goes up.

That said, it’s kinda the perfect word to describe our weekend.  Actually, “freezlax” would be even better.

We chose to do another 1 night weekend and had booked a night with two game drives in Pilanesburg.  You can read all about the park from the first two times we were there here and here.  It’s small, but you can see a ton of animals there and it’s only 2 hours from Joburg.  We left Saturday morning and got there just in time for our afternoon drive.

We weren’t looking to track big cats or anything thrilling like our time in Sabi Sands.  We really just didn’t want to stay in Joburg (who would??) and game drives are relaxing for us.  It’s great to be outside for hours when you live a compound bound life during the week and we both just really enjoy seeing the animals.  No matter what, one drive is always different from the next. 

Saturday we saw so many ellies…

One even charged at another and drove it from the rest of the herd…

It was pretty intense.

We also got to see a troop of baboons.  I’m usually not a fan of monkeys.  They’re unpredictable and they have hands- not a good combination in my book.  These baboons have never been fed by humans though, so they are just baboons doing baboon things…

It was so great to see all the little babies. 

We got up close and personal with a giraffe…

and we got to see my personal faves in some great light as the sun was setting…

After our drive we enjoyed a great braai (bbq) out in the bush and then caught a very chilly ride home.  It’s winter here and it gets cold when the sun goes down. When you’re riding in an open air vehicle it makes for a pretty frigid ride. 

Okay, so we’ve returned from a great day outdoors, had some cool animal sightings and enjoyed a lovely dinner together out in the bush- perfect day. We can’t wait to hit the hay and get up fresh for our early morning drive.  We get to our room and it is freezing.  Julie starts flipping lights and figures out all but one lamp won’t turn on nor will the heat.  We call the front desk- “most people don’t even have lights right now- so be happy you have one.” Um, okay.

It was a nightmare.  Oh, except you have nightmares while you’re sleeping and there was none of that.

When the alarm went off at 6:40am we both said “no way”.  No way were we going to get out of our ice-beds to go ride in a jeep in 40 degree weather (4 degrees Celsius) for 3 hours. 

We’re in Africa, things like this happen. Even at expensive lodges.  It sucked, but what can you do? Well, you can send a very heated email to Expedia-which I plan on doing immediately.  It should be easy since I was composing it in my head at 3am in an attempt to keep my brain from freezing.

When we finally braved the cold enough to throw on clothes, we had a nice breakfast (by the fireplace) and then headed back to Joburg.

Pics from this weekend…

 

We’ve got a long weekend ahead of us.  A group of us are heading to Namibia Wednesday night to see the world’s tallest sand dunes!

We’re camping.

I’m currently on mission to find thermal underwear.