Why I hate glass doors on accessible showers.

We made our way outside. Our driver, Charles, was also a driver in Cape Town, and it was nice seeing a face that we already knew. They had a big passenger bus and also a smaller trailer that carried all of our luggage. The bus had the lift in the back and wheelchair clamps and seatbelts. We fit 4 wheelchairs in there and 9 able bodied people.

Where I stayed

It was already afternoon, so we stayed at a nearby hotel - City Lodge Barbara Road. Each pair got their own room and rested.We had an accessible room, but let me tell you about the bathroom. It was weird and not like how I'm used to. The toilet was extremely low to the ground, and the grab bar was vertical…out of the floor. It did have a roll under the sink, but it was too narrow to roll under. FACEPALM!

***I lost a lot of photos, I THINK some did not save because I was offline so much, but no one can be sure!

The shower did not quite go as planned. I lost the photo, but I will explain it. There was a glass door with an opening for the wheelchair with a little incline. When my carer was picking me up to get in the shower her foot got stuck under my chair and the chair got caught on the lip, so she couldn't push it away, and we both fell into the glass, LUCKILY it didn't shatter. BUT it did crack.

Once we quickly got out, we called the front desk and had someone from maintenance come and check it out, because we didn't want to leave it and let someone else use it and the glass shatter on them. We had the complimentary breakfast around 6am, and then we got on the \bus and headed to the reserve.

Tshukudu Private Game Reserve

6 hours later, a stop to pee and a bite to eat. We made it! We stayed at Tshukudu Private Game Reserve. It is off the main road and down a dirt drive about 2 miles in. We stayed here for 4 nights.

We got to our rooms. Me and my caretaker were on the left side of the newly remodeled handicapped rooms. Zack (wheelchair user) and his mom, Shirley, were on the right. Outside I noticed a fenced in playground for a big cat. Right then, I heard a scream and Shirley bolted out of her room and yelled, "THERE'S A CHEETAH IN MY ROOM!"

The wild cheetah population is going extinct and at this reserve which is more like a rescue and release summer camp for cats. If the cubs mother is killed, the chance of survival of the cubs is zero.That's when the reserve will take the cubs in and raise them until they are 6 months old. They will give them all their food and proper medicine and teach them how to be a big cat in the wild, even teaching them to hunt, until they are 6 months, when they release them.

The cubs are brought up by loving humans so you can pet them, but you can't feed them. I mean they are still wild animals.

Where I stayed

Our building was new, but many of the other rooms were older. Our room had sliding glass doors to get in, not in the shower! The room was very big. There may have been a black widow in the closet. There was a queen bed in the middle, and they set up a single bed next to the window. The bathroom was very large with enough room for a hoyer lift AND a dance party! It was very accessible. They provided a shower wheelchair for me, and had an extension hose to make it hand held. The toilet had the South African accessible (slanted) grab bars. And a long roll-under counter, with a sink, soaps and lotions.

We could do a night game drive, but I was a little tired so my caretaker and I unpacked and just walked around the camp. In the middle of the preserve was a watering hole that you could see from the camp’s tree walkway. Obviously, not wheelchair accessible. Things with the word tree usually never are, not yet at least. Some day! They also had stairs and a swinging board walk you could cross to see the watering hole, if only trees had elevators.

It was around dusk when I went. I was only there for 10 minutes, but when I left it was already pitch black. The monkeys kept screaming at me and running across the boardwalk overhead. I did take videos, but they got deleted, figures.

What we ate

There was a little confusion about the food. We didn’t eat at fancy restaurants, it was the equivalent to eating camp food. No problem.

We sat down for dinner as everyone was returning. They made us a big dinner. My caregiver and I had requested a vegan diet (when we first signed up). They had bought a lot of vegan “meats” for us. For breakfast we had eggs, bacon, beans, toast with jelly, peanut butter, or vegan butter and fruit - the pears were out of this world.

We did eat a shopping plaza

We went to eat at this restaurant. I have a photo of the menu, but I can’t find the restaurant online. (sorry, i tried) They had a vegan section on the menu. Then after we ate we had about 45 minutes to go to the store so I just bought new shoes. When we were pulling out of the parking lot, we ended up hitting the curb and something happened. Luckily they had a car shop across the way, and during all this we went to a smoothie bar, we went to the bathroom because the plaza had public bathrooms, but the flickering, dim, pale yellow light made it feel like a horror movie.

This was the day I voluntarily put my hand inside the mouth of ONE of Africa’s most DANGEROUS creatures….THE HIPPOPOTAMUS!!!!!! - Jessica the Hippo

Alfie drove us to this house that had a HIPPO - technically 3! 25 years ago, game ranger Tonie rescued this baby hippo after the calf washed up on the banks of the Blyde River with its umbilical cord still attached and no mother in sight. This was in 2000, during South Africa's floods - in Kruger we drove past where you still saw the sand from where the floods hit.

Toonie and his wife Shirley fell in-hippo-love, and they lovingly raised a hippopotamus. Feeding her a proper herbivore diet and rooibos tea, sleeping in a warm bed, and her nightly aromatherapy massages. They even released her to the wild to make hippo friends, but every time she returns to Tonie, Shirley, and the dogs.

They added concrete ramps. (made for a hippo) Alfie and Charles would bring our chairs backwards down the steep ramps, the person in front looped a rope around your front chair legs to pull to slow down; they had a big pond in the back where the hippos were. They had this wooden platform a step above the water, where you could walk or wheel across up to the railing where the hippo would open his mouth on the rungs. The female was named Jessica, and they also had a baby hippo that they rescued, along with an adult male, who like Jessica, opened his mouth against the railing wanting some sweet potato, too. But Jessica is the one they trust letting a human stick their hand into the mouth of a hippo. We fed Jessica a slice of raw sweet potato. We also got to pat her little chin hair. We also got to feed her a liter sized bottle of rooibos tea, her favorite!

Back to the reserve

At night on game drives, we had handheld spotlights and you had to look for eyes. So I didn’t see much. The last day they were determined to find lions for us. Back in 2011 they found a lion cub after the mom was killed, and they took in the cub to raise and release. They also put a tracking collar on her.

On the game drives we saw so much from rhinos, giraffes, to zebras to bison. We saw everything: it was like the Lion King - THE CIRCLE OF LIFE! (key music) The game driver found a lioness and 2 male lions and a baby cub, but they were all sleeping. It turned out lions sleep like 20 hours a day. They also like sporting their Thanksgiving big bellies.

One morning at camp we woke up and went and sat by the pool. While we were there, there was a baboon in the tree. The baboon kept yelling at us that “THERE IS A CHEETAH RIGHT BEHIND YOU…RUNNNN” - it couldn't understand why we didn't run for our lives!

My caregiver was laying on one of the beds and eventually one of the cheetahs climbed up on her chair and was lying with her. The jealousy was real! I went to breakfast and let her enjoy the moment, I mean how often does a cheetah cuddle with you?

Later we went on our cheetah walk, with our armed guide, because we were now on their land, and we walked into the reserve where the cheetahs were completely wild and free.

That night we had an early dinner because the next day we would drive 6 hours to Kruger National Park.