We started our month in Africa in vibrant, colorful, energetic, and dangerous Johannesburg to experience a medicinal journey with an ancient root. For anyone who wants to know more, reach out. We had an incredible experience.
Full disclosure: Africa was David's bucket list trip. PJ was willing to go along, sure. But in the end, PJ had fallen head over heels in love with all of Africa - its sand and dust, color, music, crime, magical animal life, kindness, heat, joyfulness, bugs, generosity, gourmet food, traffic jams. All of it.
From Joburg we headed to Pretoria to lay low for a few days, and basically process our experience.
Then on to Mongena Lodge in the Dinokeng private game reserve, where we experienced our first game drives. What fabulous luck we had seeing lions, elephants, zebras, impalas, kudu, hippos, rhinos, crocs and so many brilliant African birds. Each day we enjoyed a pre-dawn game drive and a sunset drive, at times when the animals were most active.
Little did we know at Mongena we were just getting warmed up with African animals!
Lioness encounter. Gulp. But the guides assure us they're used to the safari trucks, and that they see the people and the vehicle as one thing. They don't realize the truck is full of delicious people. My heart pounded so much here I'm surprised you can't hear it in the video.
Up close elephant encounter, young male
Vervet monkeys
Our guide said this was a mock charge, but it sure looked legit!
