Morning report:
Usual early wake up. New couple on our truck, more Germans. The lodge has become very multicultural lately, with a large Muslim family, a large Indian family, a hoard of Germans, a girl from England and us Canadians. People seem to generally keep to themselves which is actually good due to the long days and heat. Anyway.
The morning drive was lovely. I love the park in the soft mornin light, very peaceful. We came across a large family of elephants who had just made the river crossing after terrorizing the villagers crops. The little baby was so all it was clear he'd been submerged as he crossed! Cute! We watched them have dust baths.
Went to visit te leopard from yesterday am, and he was still there and had moved his Impala up the tree a bit due to 3 hyenas hanging out at the base of the tree: brown spotted ones, first I've ever seen. Not as ugly as I expected, but these ones seem well fed!
We drove all over te park today, seeing many impala, Puku, water buck, ellies, giraffe, zebra and so on. I'm lucky that in still getting excited whenever I see anything. Managed to get some good shots of warthogs too, so Dad is happy.
The big event of the morning was spying a leopard with a baboon kill, carefully munching but keeping aware, and good thing too as hyenas were on the chase. There was a brief chase and the leopard went up a tree and the hyenas lost out. The biggest noise of it was from the tree of baboons who had lost one of their own. We did hear some hyena yipping, so I'm glad I've heard it.
Now for some R&R before te game drive tonight. I'm getting into quite the routine here!!
-------
Mid day report: two elephants decided to cross the river and pay a visit. I was seriously impressed by their climbing skills, up a 15 ft river bank with ease. They wandered around the grounds and nibbled on seed pods until they each got spooked by movement. We were all instructed to stay still and seek shelter. Interesting experience.
---------
Night report:
Tonight's drive seemed to focus on things we haven't seen in days: water buck were everywhere! We also came across a huge herd of buffalo which was amazing to see- they were very suspicious of us.
We had a magical moment where a large herd of elephants climbed down a slope to have a dust bath, very sweet. And further down that same road we had a 'discovery channel' moment where a pair of lions decided to make babies in front of us, twice. The first time was not more than 3 meters away... Talk about educational! Apparently females are in-charge of those proceedings, and when in heat, the pair mates 4x per hour.
We saw quite a few more birds today: lilac spotted roller being the most colourful.
Pious took us to the mid-point boundary between the accessible areas of the park, it was a serious drive to get there and back. On the return journey we saw a large spotted Jennet, and African Cibet, and last of all, a porcupine!!
All in all, a great evening!!
No comments:
Post a Comment