Safari in Africa!

When you go on a safari be sure you get up early because that's when the most animals are out and about.We didn't arrive soon enough to get on to the very earliest ride, but it still was sure worth it! We got to see lots of impala--a type of deer with long, curving antlers, -- scores of baboons and another type of monkey that make the sweetest, silliest pets ...as long as they are still babies! Never saw so many wild pigs in my life, before either!

The elephants were in hiding somewhere, but our scout had a way of searching them out. We covered a lot of terrain while tracking those little evidences that animals leave to show which way they have been meandering, and finally spotted one. Be warned! If an elephant ever flattens its ears against its head you're in deep trouble. For some reason he wants to destroy you!! But y'know that monstrous, lumbering beast has a secret enemy that you may never guess if you tried a hundred times. They have a real fear of getting ants up their long trunk!

We saw several huge trees that were an amazingly yellow color. Once long ago some missionaries had pitched their tents beneath one of these trees and some of them got miserably ill from malaria, which is why the tree is called the malaria tree. Does anyone know what the word malaria means and where it comes from? I suppose a lot of us would agree that if those trees were the cause of malaria and not mosquitoes, the disease would have been eliminated long ago.

Another oddity was the sausage tree. Its fruit is elongated and pudgy like yellowish-gray casings on sausages.

Hang on in there and I'll let you in our boat ride and what we saw then!