Another extremely long day planned for today. Our excursion today is “Amazing Aquila” and it is a 9 hour tour, taking 2-1/2 hours just to get there. This is a game reserve. We left on time at 8:15 and started the long drive through the Hex River Valley with dramatic mountain ranges followed by valleys of grape orchards. We had a short bathroom stop where we were warned NOT to use the ATM because one of our shipmates was robbed of his cash and debit card while attempting to withdraw money the previous day.
I wish the pics would convey to you the immensity of the mountains that we traveled through. They were huge and very scenic and beautiful!
The game reserve comprises nearly 25, 000 acres in the Southern Karoo Highlands which is a semi-scrub desert. When we arrived we were given a welcome drink of either water or a South African wine. Then we queued up and waited to be seated for the lunch buffet. Too many buses and not enough buffet lines made for a long line waiting to get food but it was worth the wait. I’m either entirely sick of cruise food or this was just a really good meal. Salads, chicken, fish, rice, rolls, potatoes and beef pie, and carrot cake. Choice of wine, water or soft drinks.
After lunch we loaded up in our 4 wheel drive vehicles and headed out. We spotted zebras and giraffes immediately. Weren’t as lucky as Pat and Cyndi the day before who got an excellent picture of the hippo. Greater Kudo, Nylla, Elephants, Impala, Lions, Rhino, Ostrich, and Cape Buffalo.
It seems like every tour we’re on we have to deal with rude, inconsiderate people. As soon as we loaded up on the truck, the couple in front of us split up and each took an outside seat instead of sitting together – total dick move. But wait, it gets better! Our guide had stopped to allow us to take pictures and was talking about the animal that we had stopped by. Apparently, he was devoting too much time to educating us and some d!ckhead at the back of the vehicle kept saying loudly “OK” “Enough” “Let’s go”. Dirty looks from others in the vehicle weren’t enough to shut him down . His wife tried to shush him, didn’t work. Then someone asked his wife “Can’t you turn him off?” Which was loudly met with approval from everyone else on the vehicle. IMO These are the type of people that should book a private tour.
Besides these people’s efforts to ruin the experience, the experience was far too good. When I tell you that we got close to the sleeping lions, close enough to touch, we were literally less than 3 feet away! It’s probably a really good thing that it was HOT, they were HOT, and they looked really well fed!
As awesome as this tour was, the bus ride back was the extreme opposite. The bus had been sitting in the 100 degree weather for a couple of hours and the air conditioning was nearly nonexistent. When I say that it didn’t cool down until we were about 7 minutes from port I would not be exaggerating. It was beyond MISERABLE. Busting out a window and dealing with the hot breeze would have been an improvement over the broiling hot tin bus we were riding in.
When we got back to the port we immediately went to the waterfront in search of a shirt I’d seen yesterday but didn’t purchase. Unfortunately, when we got to the store they didn’t have it in my size. There were still a lot of people out but not quite as many as the previous day. We didn’t really get to see anything different from yesterday. Jeff was tired out and we were ready to call it a day.
We had to have a face to face with immigration to get stamped out before we could leave. That meant the ENTIRE ship – passengers and crew. We were scheduled to leave at 8:30 and ended up not leaving until 10:30.
After a cold shower we both slept really well. Hopefully there are no more 9 hour tours in the heat in our future!
When I get home I’m going to do an entire post on all the animal butts I saw on this trip!
