Magaliesburg Mountains

We road from Jo'burg airport in our 50 passenger bus to our next location in the Magaliesburg Mountains. It was nice and spatious with our 10 people, because the other groups met us at the lodge. We were the first to arrive, so we were placed in the tents. Someone thought it was a good idea to put the 7 girls from our Community Development group in the most remote, and secluded area of the park. We stayed in platform tents, that were supposed to be 2-3 people in each. (We ended up moving more people into our tent) We were only allowed to walk from tent to tent, and had to get picked up if we wanted to get to the other groups. 

After we dropped off our bags, we get a ride back to the lodge to eat lunch. The other groups finally arrived, so we were able to meet the people we will be spending the last two weeks with. Everyone immediately went to the bar to get some beers to go with lunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with our new group members until we had to go to the Brie (BBQ). 

Before the Brie started, we sat around a campfire to talk about our itinerary for the next few days and expectations. The food was amazing (big surprise right?), and we hungout to drink a few beers before we went to bed. 

One of the park rangers dropped us off at our tents around 9pm, and the reality of our situation really hit us. We started to hear the different animal noises, including the lions from their enclosure which wasn't very far away from our tents. Our bathroom was attached to the back of our tent, but the walls were made of sticks. (Which you could clearly see through while you're going to the bathroom) we had a shower which was all clear glass in the middle of the room, a bathtub, and two sinks. Basically there was no privacy, but it's not like Emily and I cared about that. We ended up helping Victoria & Emily (2) move their mattresses into our tent, because we knew we weren't going to be able to sleep with only two people in each tent. After running with the mattresses between tents, we were settled in. Emily and I shared the double bed, and the other girls slept on the floor. Luckily we had heated blankets, but they didn't seem to stay consistently warm. We made some hilarious video diaries of our reactions to the sounds we were hearing outside, But hey, we survived! (In the morning we for sure heard some mystery animals doing it behind our tent.) on our way to the tent for the first time, there were zebras grazing between our tents.