A Visit to Africa - Part 1

Everybody has a dream destination.

Everybody has that one place on Earth that they need to visit before they die.

For many years, my dream destination has been Africa, and this year, that dream was fulfilled!  I can tell you exactly what attracted me to Africa - the wildlife.  Elephants, lions, giraffes, zebra, wildebeest, warthogs, cheetahs!  All animals that seem so unique and exotic!  Im currently studying to be a biologist at Acadia University and my plan is to study wildlife.  If I could study wildlife in Africa, it would be another dream come true, but for now, I can share my 2 week adventure in...

SOUTH AFRICA

In January, a friend of mine (Jenny) and I booked a volunteer program at the Glen Afric Farm in Broederstroom, South Africa.  We booked through a company called Amanzi Travel and Volunteer Southern Africa.  After we had the program booked, we booked our flights, and at that moment, it became official.  We would be in South Africa on April 28th!!!!! (I could add another million exclamation marks, but I'm sure you get the point)

We purposely booked our trip with a layover in London, England so that we would have some time to go explore the city.  London has always been one of those places I've wanted to visit as well, so why not kill two birds with one stone?  On the night of April 26th, we boarded our flight at Halifax International Airport, where we would fly to Toronto, then to London.  Let the 7.5 hour flight commence...

When we landed in London, we got on the tube that would take us downtown.  Luckily for us, my sister and her husband have been to London before and could give me some advice such as what train stop to get off at, and some ideas for things to do while we were there.  What they told me was to "get off at Leicester Square and go south".  Once we got off the train, we walked North for about 5 minutes before realizing we needed to turn around and go the other way.  I guess the "go south" part of their advice wasn't as helpful since I had no idea which way was south...

Eventually we managed to find out way to some of the big tourist sites in London including Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, the London eye, Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace.  

It was great having almost a full day in the city!  The weather and the city were both beautiful!  It was cool seeing big red double decker buses, and red phone booths everywhere.  I was hoping maybe we would bump into somebody famous, or somebody royal, but neither of those things happened.  It was a quick few hours in the city, but after some supper at an English pub, we found our way back to the airport so we could board our flight to a whole different hemisphere!

11 hours later....

Now that we were in South Africa, the real adventure could begin!  We were picked up at the airport along with 2 other Canadians and taken to the Glen Afric Farm where we would be spending the next 2 weeks!  Upon our arrival, we were given a little tour of the place.  We were shown around the more resort area of the farm complete with bar, pool, and restaurant. Yes, if you want to visit Africa and are looking for a place to stay, you can look up the Glen Afric Country Lodge!

We were then taken to the stables that we would clean every morning, and the area of the farm where the volunteers live.  But most exciting was getting to meet Sasha and Shumba the almost 1 year old lion cubs that we would get to visit/play with whenever we wanted!  It was incredible getting to be so close to actual lions!  Sure, they weren't big adult lions, but they were still lions!  When we entered their enclosure, we always had to be with somebody else and carrying a wooden stick just in case we needed to push the lion away from us.  It was never really scary being in with them...you were too distracted by how amazing they were to be scared!  I quickly learned from watching the two cubs that you don't really want to get involved in "play time" the way they do it.  There idea of playing is biting each other...I was fine just throwing a metal bowl for them which they would chase after.

We weren't really expected to do work on our first day since we had just travelled for over 30 hours, but I did go with a group of the volunteers to build a fence in the afternoon.  Since there were so many people, I more so just spent my time watching the others who knew what they were doing, and hanging out with an ostrich.  Before supper, we also got to go around and feed the lions, cheetahs, leopard, tigers, and hyena!

Each morning we would wake up at 7:30 and clean out the horse stables (while others cleaned out the elephant house).  After emptying wheelbarrows of horse droppings into a larger trailer, we walked the horses to a field where they would spend the day outside.  One of the horses was actually a little pony named Granny who is over 20 years old.  If you were the one walking Granny to the field, you wanted to get a headstart  because it would take you twice and long to get there as everybody else.  Poor Granny wasn't exactly a speedy pony.

After breakfast, we were given a tour of the big cat enclosures where we could admire them and take lots of photos!  How many people have been a single fence away from lions, cheetahs, a leopard, a hyena, and tigers?  We started at the cheetahs Bailey (who only had three legs) and Oliver.  For any of you who may be familiar with the TV show "Wild at Heart", you may recognize Bailey!  I'm not sure if that show ever aired in Canada though.  

Funny enough, the hyenas name is Roxy, which is also my dogs name!  I assumed it was a sign that I was meant to go to Glen Afric someday!  In the afternoon, we took Bailey to the Boma which is a little venue area for events such as wedding receptions.  What we were doing was seeing how Bailey acted in the presence of people.  It had been awhile since there had been a lot of interaction with him, so we just wanted to see what happened.  Luckily for us, everything went smoothly, and he just walked around investigating the area.

We took the cheetahs back to their enclosures, then went back out for a drive to take some food to some of the wild animals on the farm.  We fed Lucy and Camilla the giraffes, as well as a bunch of wildebeest, zebra and warthogs.  I love being surrounded by wildlife, especially when they are within 10 feet of me!  I couldn't stop looking around everywhere!  No matter where I looked there was some sort of African animal nearby.  Not once did I get tired of having the wildlife around.  I would see Lucy almost every morning and admire her every time!  The zebras would wander around, along with the donkeys and other giraffes.  Anytime I would encounter them, I would take some pictures, and say "hi".  I guess I knew that in only 2 weeks I would be back to the place where wildlife is deer and raccoons...

I think this is where I will end this post.  Just a little introduction of an experience I will never forget!  I asked Heather if I could do a few posts instead of one big long one, so this is just Part 1 of many.  There are more stories to come, more wildlife to be seen, and lots of pictures for you to look at! 

Until next time,

Wesley Pitts