Our first game drive of the African safari – and what a day! We set out at 5.45 am following an even earlier breakfast (hard to believe that Georgie even knew that time existed!) The morning involved many kilometres of driving to see a variety of animals, including giraffe, springbok, zebra, wildebeest, warthog, steenbock, jackal and ostrich – as well as a lone lion, which was very exciting.
After a break for the hot part of the afternoon, we started anew. Again, a variety of animals presented themselves to us, but it wasn’t until the last few minutes that the piece de resistance occurred: finally, an elephant! Georgie was in tears and we were all gobsmacked. Then five giraffes walked past. Oh my goodness gracious me!
Another game drive began early with four giraffes presenting themselves straight off. Then we had two lionesses come and drink from a pool right alongside the truck. Most exciting! On another drive we saw three cute lion cubs waiting for their mum to return. Gorgeous! Finally, on our last drive we saw a rhino. Yay!
There were so many animals presenting themselves to us over the five different game drives we did. They included: big mobs of springbok, plenty of black faced impala, lots of oryx, kudu, steenbok, warthogs, lions, lots of kori bustards, groups of ostriches, quite a few pale chanting goshawks, giraffes, duiker, a few lilac breasted rollers, some plains zebras, brown eagles, big mobs of wildebeest (gnu), blue cranes, black backed jackals, ground squirrels, hyenas, cattle egrets, southern korhaans, franklin or spur fowls, blacksmith lapwings, white tailed mongoose, red hartebeest, an elephant, grey hornbills, widow birds, secretary birds, a honey badger, huge millipedes, and a variety of small birds. Phew!
The next game park we will visit is Chobe, where people have been telling us they need to carefully avoid the elephants because there are just so many of them. Golly! Georgie is almost sick with anticipation!
Wow! Color me a deep shade of envious! This and the previous entry make me go all googley-eyed.
The pic of the elephant looked a bit faded so I tried enhancing it:
The sunset pic of the giraffes looked like it could be picked up a bit too.
I’m not sure I succeeded as well with that. Perhaps going for clarity was less important than emphasising the romantic silhouettes.
Yeah, I kinda liked the silhouette effect. I have plenty of clearer giraffe pics. In fact I have oodles of giraffe photos! We only post a very bare minimum of photos because the mobile phone network is not very efficient at the internet-thingy. So we pick and choose to try and get stuff that illustrates what we have written. And arty-fartyness is a consideration too!
Holy Dooley. What a great day you had. I’m packing my bags right now. Haha. I wish.
Ngari and I just came back from Sri Lanka. We were told where to go by a big bull elephant in musk! Saw the back of a leopard under a tree. Greylander monkeys, birds galore, water buffalo, crocs and the list goes on. Have fun