I just returned from Safari. The southern team came up and we all drove up to 
Penjari on Saturday morning. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive. There were a total of 6 cars in our group so 3 cars left early in the morning and 3 cars left about and hour later. I was in the second set of cars - which I'm greatful for because I got to sleep an hour longer :). Anyway, I rode in the car with the Emersons. They are a ton of fun to be around and so easy to be with. After some "playing" with Marty's truck (a guy from the southern team) we headed to Penjari. We got there about 2:30ish and went to the hotel to check in. Now, in order to understand the next happening, you need to keep in mind this is Africa. Ok - so we arrive and go to the "front desk" and tell them we are checking in and we need our room keys. It ends up that the hotel had overbooked, some miscommunication with the main branch people, and there weren't enough rooms or big enough rooms for us all to have what we had reserved. Dave and Bryan had a "go-around" with the guy in charge. This was rather amusing because it was all in French and I could get bits and pieces of it as they talked. They finally got them to give us some portion of our reservation. So, we all "squished" in to the rooms we were given. I ended up sharing a room with one of the southern team families and Emily. We were pretty tightly packed. It was a great bonding experience. The second night we were able to get more rooms and Emily and I shared our own room. Anyway, that was all the first hour we were there. We finally got our stuff in and went out looking for animals.
Penjari on Saturday morning. It's about a 3 1/2 hour drive. There were a total of 6 cars in our group so 3 cars left early in the morning and 3 cars left about and hour later. I was in the second set of cars - which I'm greatful for because I got to sleep an hour longer :). Anyway, I rode in the car with the Emersons. They are a ton of fun to be around and so easy to be with. After some "playing" with Marty's truck (a guy from the southern team) we headed to Penjari. We got there about 2:30ish and went to the hotel to check in. Now, in order to understand the next happening, you need to keep in mind this is Africa. Ok - so we arrive and go to the "front desk" and tell them we are checking in and we need our room keys. It ends up that the hotel had overbooked, some miscommunication with the main branch people, and there weren't enough rooms or big enough rooms for us all to have what we had reserved. Dave and Bryan had a "go-around" with the guy in charge. This was rather amusing because it was all in French and I could get bits and pieces of it as they talked. They finally got them to give us some portion of our reservation. So, we all "squished" in to the rooms we were given. I ended up sharing a room with one of the southern team families and Emily. We were pretty tightly packed. It was a great bonding experience. The second night we were able to get more rooms and Emily and I shared our own room. Anyway, that was all the first hour we were there. We finally got our stuff in and went out looking for animals. 
Ok - what you do is get in your truck, or as I prefer, on top of your truck, and you take different circuts around the millions of miles in the park to see all these animals. The very first night, we saw elephants and lions. They told me that we were lucky to see lions at all. We saw them everyday we were there. It was great. We saw elephants, hippos, monkeys, baboons, so many different types of deer, some type of buffalo (can't remember the name), different kinds of birds, worthogs, and....a bunch of other stuff I can't think of. Anyway, I never got to see the elephants up close because we were watching the lion when the other people saw the up-close elephants. But I did seem them from a distance. It's so amazing to see God's imagination in his creation! The second day we were there - the lions had killed a buffalo and were sitting next to it chasing the vultures away. That was awesome! I rode on the top of Brett and April's car and the Friezen's car the whole weekend. It was a great trip! I'm gonna steel some pictures from other people who had a better camera than I did. I got some pictures but the people with zoom lenses got great pictures! The first picture is of one of the male lions we saw by it's kill. The second picture is of a bunch of us standing on the cars looking out at some different lions.
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