After fishing, we had a brief but fun, fun, fun swim party. Then we had a crazzzy jeep drive. Guess what we saw first? ...Literally, guess in the comments before I tell you…

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Done already? Lions! :o A pride of thirteen in the same spot, including four cubs! Wow, four, that is higher than I can count. Let’s see, one… Think, think, THINK. Wait, how did you get in here? This is a private room. Are you writing this? STOP!  Oh, it`s clearly 72, it`s so obvious. Anyways, we “stalked” the lions in our jeep and got to within a few feet of them. We watched them for awhile and then went to go watch the sunset. Along the way, we came across this aggressive elephant that kept trumpeting at us, waving his ears, and charging. He was mad. He followed us for a while and kept doing it. Finally, he gave up, but when we came back down the road about 20 minutes later he started all over again. It’s true, an elephant never forgets.

While we were watching the sunset, two baby elephants were wrestling, rolling around, and playing together. They were having lots of fun and we were having fun watching them. We ate a snack down by the shore, but we had to pack it up after about 15 minutes because the psycho elephant found us and started trumpeting while he was running toward us. We got back in the jeep and headed for camp, where we ate a delicious dinner.

We got up early this morning, but we get up early every morning. We jumped into the jeep after drinking some hot coco and went to a spot for a nature hike. We drove up to this ridge and parked. Then we followed an elephant trail into the bush that led us to a drainage. We hiked the mostly-dry river bed down to the lake where one of our guides had moved our jeep. Along the way, we discovered some cool things like a hyena den, a sausage tree that is used for medicinal purposes, and lots of different animal tracks. For a while, baboons followed us. We even crossed quicksand. But then we got into grass. I really didn’t like it.

If you didn`t know, I have grass allergies, so I was SO itchy in the grass. Ha, that doesn’t even describe it. It was this tall, see. Wait, you can`t see my hands, so how do we do this? Aha! The grass was as tall as me and kept hitting me in the face:( The hike pushed me to the limit, but I made it, and there was a special reward for me at the end of the hike. Most of you in my family, or if you’re my friend, know that I get super crazy around sugar, like super crazy, like SUPER CRAZZZZY. So, ha-ha guess what I got? COFFEE!

When we arrived in Johannesburg, I saw a sign that said, the dust on my boots, the rhythm of my feet, and the beat of my heart says, “Africa.” I keep thinking about that sign and repeating the words, kinda making a song out of it. Now I know what it means. Africa is now a part of who I am. We have heard many new and interesting sounds in southern Africa. Funny, Dad tells me “you are the sound of Africa” because I am always making noises.