At the end of the 2nd day’s evening game drive, Kurt and I were dropped off at the luxurious Tinyeleti Treehouse! Think of this as a complex and beautiful treehouse about 2-3 stories high in the middle of the South African bush with a comfortable bed and shower and toilet but in the middle of nature with no walls. A romantic 3 course dinner had already been prepared and locked up in cabinets for us to serve ourselves under the lantern-light. There was also ample wine and a complementary honeymoon bottle of champagne waiting for us. We were given a flashlight, a cell phone, and a radio in case we needed rescuing, but we honestly felt pretty safe.

All evening, we dined to the sunset views of the Sabi River and the sounds of hippos. By the way, hippos are LOUD! When the bugs came out, we retreated to the safety of our mosquito net. There actually weren’t many mosquitoes thankfully. It was mostly just this one annoying little type of beetle that really just cared about going for the light sources. Kurt spent a good portion of the night sweetly making sure bugs didn’t try to get past our mosquito net and into the bed. All night long, we heard hippos, frogs, the whoop call of hyenas, and tons of wildlife. A real symphony of nature. Surreal.

In the middle of the night, we heard something brushing against the outer door downstairs. I was freaked out, but not enough to get up and see what it was. I had reasoned with myself that if something wanted to get us, it could, but it would have to really want to. For example, a leopard or a lion could climb up, but out of all the options out there, for him to choose us and want to climb up into this treehouse would have to just be fate. Snakes could technically get up too, but it also seemed unlikely that a snake would climb all the way to the top of the tree house and then climb around the mosquito net and into the bed. I also lulled myself into a false sense of security with the hippos. See, hippos are the most dangerous animal out there. They kill the most people of any animal out there. So I managed to convince myself that the sounds of the hippos (who clearly couldn’t reach us in our treehouse) somehow would keep other animals away. Totally not true, but it worked for me that night. Sometimes the lies we tell ourselves are powerful haha.

Kurt, on the other hand, had a healthy fear of the hippos… even inside the treehouse. At one point during the night, he got up to go to the bathroom downstairs which was still protected but less protected than where our bed was up top. And as soon as he got down there, I heard loud hippo grunts coming from the right side. It sounded like it was RIGHT next to us. The thing about nighttime and the outdoors is that everything sounds louder and closer than it actually is, so who actually knew how close it was. I felt certain there was no way the hippos could get inside the treehouse, so I closed my eyes again. And then I heard another loud hippo grunt… this time coming from the left side of us. I knew Kurt would for sure be freaking out at this point, so I called down to check, “Babe? Are you ok?” I got a very shushed and freaked out “Beee quieetttt,” in reply. Needless to say, he survived. It’s funny from his perspective, but you got the gist of it.

When the sun rose, we were awakened again by the grunts of hippos and chirps and squaks of the birds of the bush. We made ourselves some coffee and enjoyed the views until our trusty guide picked us up for our morning safari.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. If you ever have the chance to try this type of opportunity, DO IT. I promise it wasn’t as scary as it seemed like it might be, and the experience was like nothing else.