Meerkat experience

In South Africa we did this really cool tour. We went out to a meerkat colony. It was amazing, the second the sun came up they clambered out of a hole and started sunning themselves. They are trying to warm up and they have a"solar panel" on their stomach when we put a shadow in front of its stomach it moved right away.

The whole family fights every morning and when one meerkat wins a fight they pee on the loser. They do this twice a day.

Team huddle! The poor little guys were getting cold.

Surprisingly meerkats are very affectionate animals and they hug and kiss a lot

Penguins

We went to a place called Boulders Bay which is just out of Cape Town the main tourist center of South Africa. There is a big colony of the African penguin. They live in a small bay surrounded by boulder's hence the name boulders bay.

We were lucky to see a mother with a very small chick.

 

You are probably wondering what is wrong with these penguins, they are actually young adults loosing they're non water proof baby feathers.

 

This was one of the penguins favorite spots to chill. They are warming up after fishing in the freezing water.

There were a lot of penguins out fishing to feed themselves and they're chicks.

Blyde River Canyon

Blyde river canyon is the third biggest  canyon in the world. The canyon was pretty impressive but I liked the potholes more. The three rondavels were equally impressive though.  We visited this South African national park on my moms birthday.

This is one of the rondavels.

Blyde river canyon. I liked the orange rocks but apart from that i didn't really like the canyon.

This weird thing is part of the potholes. I don't really know a lot about it except that its been there for millions of years.

Kruger national park

Animals galore, this is where you see all the African animals you want including the big five. The big five are The African Elephant, The African Lion, The Cape Buffalo, The leopard and last but not least the Rhino. We had the luck of seeing them all. The park in itself was amazing the animals were popping out of everywhere and all we had to do was keep our eyes open and drive on the tar road. The only animals we did not see were the cheetah and wild dog. In addition to the big five our favorites were giraffes,zebra,warthog and the guinea fowl. (Guinea fowl are basically a black bird with white spots and a big blue hammer like head. )

We had the luck of seeing these rhinos 10 minutes into the park right on the road.

One of my mothers favorite animals the warthog.

The babies were by far the cutest animals we saw.

This is just one of the pictures that shows how mixed up the animals are.

This is just one of the Hyenas that prowled the perimeter of the camp ground.

There were 2 types of monkeys in the park baboons and these cute guys the vervet monkey ,he was one of the smallest ones we saw.

We saw plenty of elephants and quite a few big groups this was one of the at the river.

We didn't see many crocs but I was dissapointed in their size. 

 

 

HIPPO!!!! We saw an incredible amount of these big guys. 

These two teenage elephants were having a brawl. The bigger one won. It wasn't a fight to the death.

This big guy was swaggering around on the edge of the river. We were amazed by the size of the African elephant  they were at least 1 meter taller than the asian ones.

The guinea fowl a crazy  crazy bird. They like to fight and jump on the road.

Brotherly love.

This was probably my favorite animal. We got to see six of them in total three males three females.

Its hard to believe but these birds are endangered.

SMILE!!!!!!

Look into my eyes.

FIGHT!!! FIGHT!!!FIGHT!!!!FIGHT!!!!

Hut two three four keep it up two three four hut two three four

Slow boat down the Mekong

To make our way from Houay Xai to Luang Prabang we had the choice of taking a 20 hour minibus ride or a 2 day scenic boat ride down the Mekong so we went for the second choice. There was beautiful scenery and lots of cultural and local activity. The little town we stayed in overnight was quite nice but our hotel was very basic. The first day we were on a boat that had too many people and lots of drunks. The second day was nicer because the scenery was much more exciting with more rapids and a cave.

This is what it looked like inside our boat, all the seats were old car seats.

This was the scene when we arrived at a little town for the night. Everyone is trying to get us to stay at there hotel.

This is what the slow boats looked like from the outside.