Cape Town Mission Field 

    10 August 2018
    Day 244
Friday

We dropped a car off for service then headed to the Aquila Nature Reserve and Spa which is about a 2 hour drive northeast of Cape Town just off the N1 Highway. It was a beautiful drive through two mountain ranges. The first range we drove through a tunnel to get to the other side. It was about 4 kilometers long. There was snow on top of some of the mountains and there were beautiful orange, yellow, and purple wildflowers along the road way. There were many vineyards throughout the valleys we drove through. When we arrived they offered us champagne or non-alcoholic grape juice from a local vineyard. We opted for the non-alcoholic grape juice. It was amazing. We had lunch in the main lodge dining room, checked into our room overlooking the reserve, then went on our first 2 1/2 hour game drive in open air trucks. We saw hippos, elephants, springbok, wide-lipped rhinos, lions, and giraffe's. Our guide had a lot of great information on the animals. He referred to the Springboks as fast food for the mountain leopards. He examined some Rhino dung, had us smell it, then explained how the female scent, picked up by the male rhino, when she's in heat is then destroyed by the male rhino so others won't pick up on it then he hunts her down by the smell.
In the evening we viewed the planets with a local astronomer through his telescope. We saw Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Venus. The milky way was so bright it looked like there was clouds in the sky, but it was just zillions of stars.

African elephants with zebra and female ostrich

Male wide-lipped Rhinos

Mother Rhino with 8 month old babe

Giraffe's on far hillside

Springboks all in a row