Wandering Wildlife Vet

Here’s the second post of this update! It’s also my second to last post😱 I will post once more at the end of my trip to sum up the final days of traveling with my family! I got to Johannesburg late Tuesday, picked up our rental car and then met my family at our AirBNB. It was so nice to see them for the first time since January!! We had dinner that night before we headed to Kruger!

We spent Wednesday-Friday at Kruger National Park. We did game drives and went to the Elephant Museum at the Letaba camp. We stayed in Safari Rest Camp and it was a beautiful camp! We had a braai Thursday night which was so nice to do with the family. We got so lucky with our sightings! We saw everything we could possibly ask for while we were there: hyaenas, wild dogs, leopards, lions, elephants, and all the game species! It was my first time seeing wild dogs in the wild so I was super excited about it.

Saturday morning we flew to Cape Town to spend the next few days there. We arrived in Cape Town early afternoon, picked up our rental car, and checked into our AirBNB. We had a top floor apartment overlooking the waterfront. It was beautiful! We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront enjoying the views.

We went sightseeing on Sunday. Our first stop was the penguin colony at Boulders Beach! The African penguin is endangered so the park service provide this colony with artificial nesting huts to protect the eggs. We then continued down the cape until we reached the Cape of Good Hope. We took the funicular to the top and had beautiful views of the bay below.

The weather had been iffy since we had gotten here so we were having difficulty getting to Table Mountain. Luckily, Monday morning was nice and the cable car was open! While we were waiting in line, we met a student group from a school 5 minutes from where we live in Atlanta!! Such a small world. After we finished at Table Mountain, we headed down to Hermanus for whale watching and shark diving.

The weather was still not great which meant the ocean had huge waves so our excursions got canceled. Luckily, we were close to the Harbour so Tuesday morning we went down and tried to find a whale watching tour before we left. We were able to find one and go out the morning! We saw 3 Bryde’s whales, a fur seal, some penguins, and an albatross! Unfortunately, mom and Chase (along with half the boat) got sea sick but they were still able to see the animals. After our tour, we drove down to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the African continent. It is also the point where the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean meet. It was extremely windy by that point so we were happy not to be on a boat anymore!

Today was our last day in Cape Town before we fly to Durban tomorrow. We decided to have a chill day to relax because the rest of our vacation is going to be jam packed! We did go to the Two Ocean Aquarium on the waterfront for a few hours and watched some movies before we packed up. Overall, we’ve had an amazing time so far and I can’t wait for the rest of it!