Before The Safari

Everyone loves to write about safaris. But, I’m going to write about something different. I’m going to tell you about my experience, before the safari.

Last summer I went to Australia for my cousin sister’s wedding. After the wedding celebrations were done, we decided to stay on longer to explore the country. Australia is a beautiful place, full of greenery and many animals and birds.

One of the most exciting things to do in Australia is go on a safari. In order to do this, we had to sleep at 10:30 pm as we had to wake up very early the next morning as the safari would begin at 5:30 am.

The next day, I was roughly woken up by my father, who was rushing everybody to wake up and go to the bathroom and change at 3:30 AM. I was too drowsy, so I fell back in bed, but my father took off my blanket, carried me, shook me and put me in the bathroom. After every three seconds, he would ask me, are you done??? Are you done??? Are you done??? And then after me, my sister and my mother were done, he went in last and took so much time that by the time we were ready it was 4:40 AM. The bus was scheduled to arrive at about 4:45 am. So, we had to run as fast as we could to catch the bus and we settled in the nearest bus with animals painted on it. My father pushed us all in the bus, and then he followed. Just as I breathed a sigh of relief and settled my head on the window, for a power nap, I heard the commentator speaking in a language, I didn’t quite understand. My father quickly recognized this language to be Spanish and hurried to the front of the bus. He told us to follow him. He had a quick discussion with the driver and quickly realized that we had gotten onto the wrong bus. What followed, were dirty, angry glares from the bus passengers as we shoved our way to the front. My father quickly pushed us out of the bus and apologized many times to the bus driver who kept giving him irate looks. We ran to the other side of the street where another bus was waiting and was gearing up to leave. This time, my mother took charge after giving my father the “I’m in control now,” look. She calmly got onto the bus and had a quick conversation with the bus driver and signaled my father to usher us in. And there I sat on a comfortable seat and settled down for a good power nap.