Lions, Rhinos, Hippos and SNAKES!

We had a busy, fun time showing our friends all the things we like in South Africa.  We were sad to see them head back to China, Charlie most of all because he loved having his big buddy Noah.  Noah besides being cool because he is a nine year old boy also was a master weapons builder, he looked for sticks and rocks at every place we visited and made some amazing things.

 We saw the lions at our local nature reserve, Reitvlei.  Glad we were up high and looking down into their enclosure!

When we first got to the coffee shop on the reserve it was high drama because the rangers were in the middle of catching a very poisonous snake (which was by the playground).  It was a "Rinkhal" which is basically a spitting cobra, it did spit at the ranger but luckily he was wearing sunglasses the venom went on the glasses instead of his eyes...

Here are highlights of what Wikipedia has to say about this type of snake....

Rinkhals

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rinkhals

The rinkhals (Hemachatus haemachatus), also called the ringhals or ring-necked spitting cobra, is a venomous elapid species found in parts of southern Africa. It is not a true cobra in that it does not belong to the genus Naja, but instead belongs to the monotypic genusHemachatus. It is closely related to the true cobras.^[3]

Venom[edit]

The venom of the rinkhals is neurotoxic and partially cytotoxic, and is less viscous than that of other African elapids.^[3] When confronting a human, it generally aims its venom at the face. If the venom enters the eyes, it causes great pain.^[6]

When we first got to the coffee shop on the reserve it was high drama because the rangers were in the middle of catching a very poisonous snake (which was by the playground).  It was a "Rinkhal" which is basically a spitting cobra, it did spit at the ranger but luckily he was wearing sunglasses the venom went on the glasses instead of his eyes...

Here are highlights of what Wikipedia has to say about this type of snake....

Rinkhals

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't have a photo of the snake- although Noah did ask the ranger if he could take one!  Luckily the ranger did not oblige and got the snake into a plastic trash can and drove it to another part of the park!

Over the weekend we went on a game drive to Pilanesberg National Park, Tiffany and I should get an award for having 5 kids in the car by 4:30 AM so we could make it to the early morning drive!

We saw a whole group of rhino, pretty amazing because every day in the paper I read about more rhino that are poached.  (3 more reported yesterday down towards Cape Town)

Our game drive was amazing we saw lots of giraffe, rhino, and had the best last...two elephants playing in the water (Katie took a ton of video), a bunch of hippo and finally a Mom & Baby Hippo out of the water!

Our game drive was out of Sun City Resort, we got them to drop us off at the Palace which had many scenes in the movie blended, here is the main dining room... 

Katie & Maddie in the zebra seats!

Boys attempting to reenact the elephant scene!

We spent the afternoon at the Sun City waterpark, everyone loved cooling off in the wave pool.  Charlie and I took a little snooze in the kids area.

On our return trip to Pretoria we stopped at the snake park at Hartbeesport Dam, it was a true African experience...they were moving very dangerous snakes into their cages (with visitors in the room!).  Katie hated it there, tons of spiders everywhere, she couldn't get out fast enough.  We managed to convince her to stay for the "Snake & Seal" show.  The workers carried around some pretty bad snakes for the audience to see...the seals were very cute!

Here we are after the seal show-waiting for the guys to carry out the plastic bins with the bad snakes in them-you guessed it---they carried them through the crowd!

We are so happy that Tiffany and the kids came, we look forward to more visitors, so keep saving!