This is the story of how I died. Almost.
It all started when my family decided to travel to South Africa. We stayed in Kruger National Park so we would be immersed in the safari experience. The hotel rooms were little huts, so my parents stayed in one hut and my brother and I were in a hut a few steps away. I’m not going to lie — I was pretty excited to see a family of elephants a few feet from our room on just the first day. I knew it was going to be one unforgettable vacation.
I always thought I was a “morning” person.Then I had to wake up at 4 a.m.
You think it’s cold walking to your 8 a.m. class in the middle of January, but try sitting in an open-roof car flying through a reserve before the sun is up. That gives a whole new meaning to “freezing.” Still, nothing could quench my excitement to see all the animals.
I’ll admit my ignorance and say that I thought it would be like an open-air zoo and that the guide would know where each animal is all the time. When a “tracker” came along with us, though, I realized just how wrong I was. It was incredible to see this man study faint animal tracks on the ground and know within a few minutes what type of animal it was, where it was headed and how long ago it had been there. Throughout the trip, there was always a continuous battle in my head between “Circle of Life” and the Indiana Jones theme song.
Then we ran into the giraffes. One minute, the wind was flying through my hair as we sped along the bumpy African terrain in search of the elusive lion or cheetah, and the next, there was a pair of giraffes walking around contently. After that, we began to see animals more and more frequently. Zebras, monkeys, Timon and Pumba in real life (dream come true) and rhinos. It’s a completely different experience seeing rhinos in the wild, compared to at a zoo. In a zoo, they don’t try to charge your car and kill you. That was the first time I almost died. The second was when a spider the size of my head decided he wanted to take a shower too.
You go to the zoo during the day but we drove around the park at night, in an open car, surrounded by trees. Where panthers live. You know that feeling you get when someone’s watching you? Multiply that by 100 and you have a nighttime safari. Nighttime in Africa means complete darkness, so the only flashes of light you see are the eyes of animals peering at you from different corners. You’re not even allowed to walk alone at night in the hotel because it’s completely open with no gates or barriers to stop the animals. Even if I just wanted to visit my parents’ hut a few feet away, a hotel employee had to walk me to their hut to make sure nothing came out and ate me. Not one of my favorite experiences.
Yet the coolest — and most nauseating — part was when we finally found a lion (though my brother would argue it was more nauseating when we found cheetah cubs because of my excessive baby noises). The lion was leisurely strolling when he saw a group of antelope in the distance. It was like a National Geographic film. He began to stalk his prey and when it began to run, he bolted after it and caught it in a few leaps. Now, as a vegetarian, I would have preferred not to see a lion chewing on a cute little animal that had been happily living just moments ago, but as a tourist, I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
For almost a week, I was on this incredible adventure where each day was unlike the last. You could never know what animals you would see or what they would be doing when you saw them. Honestly, I never wanted it to end (even if I could’ve died).
