We all woke up reasonably early this morning, and just before I was going to get into the shower mum called me up to her room. She had heard some funny little noises outside that she assumed were the monkeys again, but it turned out to be a massive family of mongooses(apparently not mongeese, which I think is weird) with lots of tiny little babies!! We watched them for ages, and when they moved round to the side of the house we opened the door and watched them some more :) Dan brought the long range lense down, so we took quite a few photos of them, especially the babies!! We had breakfast and tea and coffee after the mongooses left, and waited for our 10:30am pick up. I was getting really agitated that the bus wasn't arriving, and after waiting for 25 minutes it finally pitched up. The man wasn't even phased about being late!
He drove us the short distance down the road to the landing pads for the helicopters. We went into the main building and paid our $10 entrance fees (presumably because we were going to flying over the national park?!) then we had to go outside and get weighed so they could make sure they kept the helicopter balanced. We then took our seats and waited for our helicopter to return from its previous trip. Our ride was going to be shared by a Chinese father and son, and it turned out to be slightly unfair because the father got the front seat and the son got a window seat, while Jenny got a window seat and I got a centre seat..... o well. The ride turned out to be absolutely amazing, we did several passages around the 1.7km long falls at an altitude of around 1,000 feet and traveled at 110 km/hr. We took lots of picture and videos with two cameras and Lesley's iPhone. It was an amazing opportunity to get a feel for how big and spectacular the falls truly are.
One of the most amazing parts was to get a perspective of the gorges that have been carved downstream from the main falls, an often overlooked and under appreciated feature of the falls. It was incredible to be able to see the river, falls and gorges from horizon to horizon, and essentially watch how the landscape has been carved over thousands of years. Our 12 minute ride was over far too soon and was in our opinion one of the most wonderful experiences we have had on this entire trip. We actually cannot thank Dave and Laura Olds enough for their very generous wedding gift, it is something we will remember for the rest of our lives.
We decided we didn't want to wait to go back to the lodge in their car, so we told them we were going to walk. It was less than 1 km away anyway and not too hot. The tour operators protested a lot to us leaving on our own, telling us it was very far and unsafe, but as we knew it wasn't on either account we said thanks and left. One of the guides stopped next to us on the road to offer us a lift, but we honestly did want to walk back! We were a bit hot when we got back as the sun popped out halfway along our walk, so a large glass of ice cold water was needed :) I made myself a delicious ham, cheese and tomato roll.
After a little while I realised that I had run out of tomato in the middle of the roll, so I went into the kitchen to cut some more. As I put my plate down, my mum shouted to both Dan and I because a massive massive baboon had just walked brazenly onto the porch. He was completely unfazed by the massive stick Dan started to brandish at him, by our shouting or the flailing of our arms. It walked into the kitchen and grabbed my bloody sandwich and had started eating it when Dan threw the big wooden ashtray at him. That did nothing at all, but we obviously crowded him enough that he ran out of the kitchen, through the lounge and out the main door, still clutching my sandwich! We quickly closed the porch canvases and the door and phoned reception to send security. A man arrived a couple of minutes later and started shooting a catapult at the mass of baboons that were behind our house.
Thankfully they are obviously very scared of the catapult and all ran away straight away. We have been visited by monkeys who are a little cheeky and will try to come on the porch and who stole a packet of biscuits the other morning when dad went upstairs, but nothing like this!! It was quite a disconcerting experience because the monkeys are scared of the huge stick that we keep to shoo them away but the baboon couldn't have cared less, and he could have caused any one of us a lot of harm. I was most grumpy at the fact that I had then lost half of my really nice sandwich and we didn't have any rolls left :( after sitting and reading for a long while we left mum to snooze upstairs and we went to the main lodge to use the Internet.
We sat upstairs on the level that has the amazing view of the watering hole. There was a large bull elephant drinking on one side of the water, and a herd of impala, with lots of babies, drinking on the other side. While we were using the Internet it became obvious that the bull had an issue with one of his legs and seemed to be limping. Three park rangers armed with rifles walked out towards him and were trying to provoke him enough to move away so that they could see how hurt he may be. They did nothing but annoy the bull, and even threw a stick at its head before deciding that he must be ok and leaving him be. I'm glad they left at that stage because his angry calls were pretty scary to listen to, and he may have charged them eventually.
When we were done with the Internet we went home to start the braai for dinner. We had marinaded the steaks in mums homemade balsamic sauce, and they were delicious accompanied by the curried beans. After dinner we sat on the porch chatting about how magical the helicopter ride over the falls is and how ridiculous that baboon had been, before calling it a night and going to sleep in our comfy and mosquito netted beds. :)
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