It’s our last game drive at Tintswalo and the weather is not promising. The sky is overcast and it’s still a little cool at 5:30am when we hit the road. We still haven’t seen the honey badger and everyone is ragging on Darren and Foster. Except for me – I’m a nice guy. Where’s the dang hippos you’ve told us about? And the rhinos? Get it together.

Zebras are losing their luster as we’re seeing them almost every day. But on our way to chase down the elusive hippos we run back through the Cape Buffalo herd from yesterday. Everybody is just waking up and there’s news to report. We’ve got a new member to the herd! This little guy is just hours old. Mom still has the placenta hanging. Yuck. Glad I haven’t had breakfast yet. Speaking of breakfast, this little guy is so new he hasn’t figured out where the milk spigot is for his meal. He bumps his Mom in every place but the right one. I’m sure he’ll figure it out soon. Looking around we see more young ones out and about trailing their mothers.

Times a wasting as we’re going on a hippo hunt now. But first we have to stop for chocarula coffee. Now Foster has been off tracking for the last several days but has joined us for our last safari. And he’s going to teach us a game all the native kids play. He scratches out a 3’x3′ square in the dirt and then divides that into four squares where he puts point values of 20, 30, 40, and 50. The idea is that you spit into the square to score points. So we all spit but Foster shakes his head. Seems we’re missing an important part of the game. You don’t spit spit but rather dried impala nuggets! Now I chickened out ’cause as everyone knows I have a weak stomach. I’m a delicate flower as Lynn would say. Boy, it was very tempting to go up and slap Joe or Tim on the back when they took their turn.

It was all downhill after that. Oh, we did see some hippos but they were kinda far away. And we saw a rhino but he didn’t stick around very long. On the way back we went through the buffalo herd again and 20 or so vultures hanging out waiting for the placenta to drop. Oh boy.

Well, that’s our safari adventure. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our exploits or at least enjoyed the pictures. Please feel free to leave your comments or drop us a note if you would like to be kept up to date with our travels and the foods we like to eat. If you’ve got a favorite dining place let us know and we’ll plan a trip to try it out.