I Think I'm In Love

This has single-handedly been the coolest thing I have ever done in my life. I really have fallen in love with Africa. We just got back to Malawi after a safari in Zambia. The hotel we stayed in was within South Luangowe National Park. Danielle, Heather, and I stayed in a separate lodge from my parents. Our back porch was literally right on the banks of a lake. In the lake there were hippos. During the night the sound of hippos and monkeys and other mysterious animals kept waking me up. 

I was giddy with excitement the entire time we were there. We went on a night drive the first night. It’s exactly like I imagined. Basically, the safari car was like the same ones in the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. It was my family and two guides on one car. The first night we saw a lion pride of about seventeen lions. We drove until we were literally about fifteen feet away from them. Our guide said that animals have charged at safari groups before but as long as we were quiet and didn’t really move we would be fine. It was incredible.

That night we went to sleep in our lodge. Let’s just say that the next morning two people in two different lodges asked if the screaming they heard during the night was from our lodge. Yes, yes it was. There were two huge huge huge spiders in our room. I have never seen them that big in my life. Than I go into the bathroom and there was a lizard. We look at our lamp and there’s a frog. So there was some screaming. We ended up squishing into one bed because we were so scared. We also had to sleep with a mosquito net over our bed. And let me tell you...they were so necessary. At one point during the night I woke up sweating because I had enclosed my entire body under the covers except my head because I kept imagining that there were spiders crawling all over my body. 

The next day we went on a day drive. I have never seen anything so cool in my life. Honestly. Elephants, zebras (the horse of Africa, they’re everywhere!), giraffes, lions, ampalas (the ants of Africa, they’re about the size of deer and are all over the place), hippos (they can run up to 20 mph), hedgehogs, lovebirds, etc.

Everything was amazing. So much more to tell, but I have to go so I’ll write more later and for some reason I can't upload pics right now, I'll do that too!