Tuesday saw us in the Land Rover a little after 6am and it wasn’t long before we came upon a giraffe grazing in the treetops. He was a little too far away for some good pictures but it was nice to watch this graceful creature moving through the trees. The giraffe takes a branch in his mouth and strips away the leaves between his lower incisors and a tough “dental pad” on the roof where he has no teeth. The things you learn in the bush!
A little while later we came upon another big leopard.
Just to show I wasn’t exaggerating about he closeness of these animals, this big guy just wanders down the road and the tracker on the Land Rover has just finished yawning. He started getting annoyed with us disturbing his morning nap and went off through thick brush but with three Land Rovers following him around he finally came back out. He made one more pass by my side of the truck and I was able to get a nice picture. We stayed with him for 30 minut
es or so that then gave up our position to let a couple of other groups come in.
Alan Peterson was our representative from Micato Safaris and traveled with us during our entire safaris adventure. He had a history with Jabulani and it was fun listening to their back and forth banter. When one of our party fell ill later in the trip he saw that medical attention was available and stayed at the lodge to provide any assistance that was needed.Can’t say enough about the attention our entire group received from Micato.
More about them later.
The remainder of the morning was rather standard fare for want of a better description. We saw a group of baboons, an ostrich, and a lone giraffe again. May have been the same one we saw earlier.
The highlight of the morning was an hour walk through the bush with Jabulani and his cannon. He lined us up single file and we were off down the road and through the bush. He made sure we all alternated taking up the rear – guess that was so if anyone was going to wet their pants they might have company. For some reason I don’t have a single picture other than when we got out of the truck and when we were walking back through the gate at the lodge. Guess I’m not as adventurous as I was when I was younger.
On the afternoon safarie came upon a couple of lazy boys sleeping in the shade of a tree.
As the sun was going down they kept waking up as the heat got to them and had to roll over or move back in the shade. With other trucks arriving one of the lions just got fed up and started heading for the bush. Looks like he was marking one of the vehicles as he left. We decided to move on too.
Like the previous days we again saw a lone elephant and a giraffe off in the distance. At think at this point we were all little ragged after the long day yesterday and were more than ready for a couple of gin and tonics before heading back for dinner.
