Our last day at the safari turned out to be a beautiful day, finally! We got to enjoy the sun during the day and finally see the stars at night. In the first few minutes of our morning drive we saw 15 giraffes all gathered together enjoying some breakfast of leaves on top of one of the hills. We've seen many giraffes throughout the last week but never that many gathered together. It was very neat, I think they actually gathered there to say goodbye to us.
Our final game drive that evening was special. We saw the male cheetahs (named Tiger and Woods) and then went to a beautiful lookout over the reserve to watch the sunset. We had some wine, cheese and samosas, took a lot of photos and enjoyed watching the stars come out. A great ending to our safari.
Friday we got packed up and hit the road, swinging through Durban to pick up a lost article of clothing and then headed north to Johannesburg. In total, 9.5 hours of driving! And we found the iPod hookup in the car so Ryan had some tunes to jam to while driving up the mountains rather than Britney Spears and Barry White. Beautiful scenery again, the first half of the drive has lush, green mountains and valleys (google Van Reenen Pass to see pics), the second half of the trip looked more like the American West, dry prairies and tumbleweeds.
We stayed in a cute guest house in the nice suburb of Sandton. Johannesburg is supposed to be a tough city, but we couldn't tell last night! We ate dinner at the Nelson Mandela Square, a very fancy boutique and restaurant area.
We have no plans for today...we fly out at 8:20 pm tonight (that's 1:20 pm in Wisconsin), get into Atlanta at 6 am and Madison around 10 am.
See you all soon!
-- Ryan and Holly
Safe travels back friends!!
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