Rule number one on game drives: don't get out of the vehicle. Most tempting rule to break when one needs to find something in the back of the car: Rule number one. We had a good time breaking this rule when I was looking for the talisman Mike brought along to give us good luck. We were having a relatively crappy game drive (nothing but zebras, kudus, and warthogs) up until this point and really wanted to see some lions--so the effort was to recover our lucky talisman, then we would begin seeing big game. After a fruitless search I climbed back in the car and began driving around the bend...about 200 meters until we saw a pride of lions relaxing next to the road. Yikes! That is why you don't get out of the car, ha ha.
We had a blast seeing the animals, cruising around the park, and saving two German fraulines from a gigantic spider. Good thing our ladies have us disciplined--we recovered the spider and left immediately to recline to a chapter from World War Z--the zombie epic that we were reading to each other in the car.
One of Mike's best sitings was a hare, sitting next to the road just behind a hill so that oncoming traffic could not see us. We had time to pause for a picture, then get out of the way!
Other fantastic sitings included rhinos, elephants, leopard tortoises, kudus, and of course--the lions.
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| This makes me wan to eat a salad. |
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| Or be a tortoise |
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| Not a dung beetle though. |
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| Imagine the scene in Money Python... "Run away! Run away! Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop" |
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| Big eland. The biggest of the antelope that resemble huge cows with pointy antlers. |
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| If you look directly into the eye of a heron you will see a dinosaur. Well, kind of. |
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| Rrrred Harrrrrtebeeeeest. You need to roll the r's in the bush veld. |
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| Afternoon delight. |
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| The brown stripes are a characteristic of plains zebras. One of these that isn't moving at 100 meters becomes nearly invisible. I never thought the camouflage would be as good as it is, but I would totally choose these stripes over the brown fur of a springbok. |
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| Packyderm |
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| Pachyderm that enjoys sand-blasting itself with red/brown rather than grey colored dirt. |
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| This is a water buffalo or cape buffalo (same animal) skeleton. There tend to be spots where more bones show up--usually the killing ground of lions. There were quite a few bones/skeletons in this area. Is it just me who wants to walk out there and bring the horns home? I've resisted the urge so far. |
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| Couldn't figure out why this guy was laying down in the grass, in the sun, but it looks pretty nice. I had never seen this behavior in elephants before. |
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| Rhinos! Rhinos are incredibly rare in South Africa these days with so much poaching--the horns are sold to make soup that supposedly enlarges penis size in SE Asia. It is a lot of bs. |
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| So much fun to see these guys up close in a car. He was much bigger than our minivan. |
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| Ha ha ha. |
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| It's a young one! |
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| And a younger one! |
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| Mike's 'weirdest' animal. |
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| This is a good "Africa" picture with the tall acacia trees. |
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| Cool! |
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| Pumba |
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| Erosion |
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| Lions!!!!! |
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| Papa getting ornery with the children. |
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| He doesn't look that tough :) |
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| Back to tranquility in the lion pride. |
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| This is when you really get the urge to cuddle. |
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| Nest of the buffalo weaver--a bright yellow (male) bird that makes these really cool nests--often over water, though not this time. |
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| A black faced vervet monkey--eating oranges from the guards next to the don't feed the animals sign, ha ha. |
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