April Vacation- Part 1

The kids have a long break between school terms and it coincided perfectly with Massachusetts school vacation, we were lucky to have our friends Kelli & Mason come for a visit. i got cleared to walk and drive on my ankle the day before they arrived. They were excited to see SA and we packed a ton into a short visit.  Our first part was animals of all sorts up by our place in Pretoria.  Mason is a dedicated animal lover and she was in heaven.

We found some rhinos at Rietvlei (game park right near our house) when we stopped on our way home from the airport, these guys come to the coffee shop to eat hay.

Kelly wanted to have her birthday party while Mason was here, so with lots of help from our visitors and especially Katie who made mocktails, here was an emoji party,

 Ice Hockey & Emoji cake made by a talented lady (not me)!

 Sign says mocktails-Katie made good kids drinks all night, most popular was the Deep Blue Sea which is served with a Swedish Fish candy floating inside.

 Favors made by Kelly & Katie, they worked on this for days, good they had vacation to make them!

Charlie declaring which parts of the cake he wants!  Kelly and her friends had a great time, they especially liked trying American S'mores that Kelli had brought all the ingredients from the US. 

 (you can't get graham crackers here)

We also visited the lemurs at this place called Besters Birds.  For an extra 30 rand (about $2)  you get to go in the lemur cage and feed them!

I made the mistake of sitting near Charlie, lemurs loved him and ate from his food, but really didn't come to me!  He was just the right size!

We hit the road with Kelli & Mason and went to the Ann Van Dyk Cheetah Center to see the cheetah run.  It was something to watch them go!  We did the run first then did a game drive through the farm and saw tons of wild dogs and cheetahs.  At the end we got to pat the cheetah for a moment which we thought was special until we went to our next stop which was INCREDIBLE!

My friend told me about this lion place called Ukutula.  I wish we had learned about it when we first arrived because it really was AMAZING!  We want all of our visitors to come back so we can take them there!
We arrived and got to go on the animal interaction where they take you to see each of the different types of animals.  They start with the baby lion cub...he had us at Hello!

 We played with him for a bit then got to go on to other areas where they had different animals.  At one point he jumped on Charlie and gave him a little bite, didn't break the skin but left a mark.  We were telling Charlie he can tell people he got bit by a lion...and survived!  Here is a photo of his arm...the lion mark is the vertical one, the horizontal marks are from the day before when he crashed into a tree-rough being a six year old boy!

The next group was the "Devils" which were slightly older lion and tiger cubs.  Charlie couldn't go in with them because they thought he was food...

 There were a few meerkats, always make me think of that Meerkat Manor tv show...

 Kelly got to lay down with one of the big cheetahs inside their cage...Charlie and I waited outside because all of the bigger grown animals stalked him, they would follow him along the fence.  They really wanted to have him for an afternoon snack!  

We spent the night at the lion place and got to hear them roaring at different points of the night and the morning, was something to hear!  We had a nice fire and cooked out that night.  In the morning Kelli, Mason & Kelly went walking with the lions. They said it was a pretty amazing experience.

Before we left we got to go and have one more visit with the baby lion, this time we stayed for almost an hour until he got tired.  I learned what retractable claws were, and got to see them retracting before my eyes-watch the video and you'll see them come in and out!

 Mason & the baby...

i love this action photo of Kelli the lion tamer!

We finally said goodbye to Ukutula, and can't wait for a future visit!  From there we drove on to Pilanesburg Park and got to do some game drives.  We managed to find tons of giraffe and two rhinos right near the road and on the second day we also found some elephants.

The kids loved the place where we stayed it had a giant pool and you could rent bikes.  Charlie and Katie skipped the game drives to hang out at the place.  We headed home to repack our bags for our next adventure which was Cape Town...stay tuned for part 2!