After our hike down the escarpment we went further south to our friend Murray's "croc farm." Murray is a Zimbabwean-Azungu, friend of Brittni's. I'll spare the gory details, but lets just say, it doesn't end well for the crocs. Though, they are treated well for their 3 years of life... We saw 3 different sizes of crocs. The babies were just 6 months old and about a foot long. We got to hold them. I was way too chicken to pick them up, but Britt and Murray did. I just held one for the pictures. We then saw the 3 year olds which were soon to be "conditioned" (think: hair conditioner), they were several feet long. Too strong though for a grown man to tackle one on his own. Looking into the pen at night and taking pictures was cool, all we saw were red/green/yellow eyeballs. CREEPY! Last, we saw the "breeders" which were about 6 years old. Soon they will be breeding and laying eggs. They will burry their eggs, then Murray and his crew come in and take the eggs and incubate them.
We went back to the house, which had all western amenities (yay, hot shower and electricity!). The property which has the croc farm and several houses is quite large, probably a few miles by a few miles. They even have a few different wild animals, like a game-park. So, they build a watering hole just outside the yard and have spotlights on it. It's the only water on the property, so each night all the Nyala (a type of antelope) come to drink. It was so cool! Of course, it was dark, so I didn't get any good pictures.
The "highlight" of the evening was when I heard something behind us in the grass. I thought it was the pet dog. When the guys told me that they didn't have a pet dog, I got a bit nervous. There was definitely a small animal behind me! It turns out that it was a Grysbok- which is the smallest type of antelope. Full-grown, its the size of a small dog. His name is "highlights" and he is a loner (no mate) and was brought to the house about 8 months ago, but hadn't come by for about 6 months. They'd assumed he'd been eaten by some other animal. Highlights ended up being very friendly and tame. He even came up to us and licked our hands, and we got to pet him. Again, no pictures, but it was such a cool experience!
In the morning we woke up super early (like 5am!) and then took a drive around the property, looking for the camel that lives there. We never did find him, but we saw a really pretty female nyala. We also found a tree-house that the boys had built last summer.
It ended up being an action packed weekend, with way more fun than we could have ever imagined.
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