The guides came by this morning at 6:00am to wake me up and get the day started. After I got ready, I walked up to breakfast which was a continental kind of breakfast and grabbed a couple of things to eat before we all headed out to the vehicles and loaded up. Today I rode with Nathaniel, and we headed out with our guide to see what we could see. Things were slow this morning, but it was nice seeing the land, some watering holes and some animals here and there as the morning went on. We saw a lot of Impala (which would be a common theme on the trip), Zebra, a big Baboon family, and maybe the coolest find of the morning was a pair of African Fish Eagles sitting in a great perch that allowed us to get close and shoot them for a good 20 minutes. We saw a few different kinds of birds, including a Kingfisher which was very cool for me. I’m fascinated with those birds and know they have at least 4 or 5 species of them here. I hope to get to see them all before the trip is over. I also got to see my first Elephant in the wild as we came around a blind corner and next thing I knew, this big Bull Elephant was maybe 40 feet away from us. He wasn’t too happy as I think we startled him a bit, and he turned to us with his ears out… a sign of aggression I think, and we backed up a bit and then decided to give him his space and moved on. The guide said it was mating season, and this male was alone, and maybe a bit frustrated. LOL
After the morning drive, we headed back to camp for lunch at
12, and then we had a nice break until 3:00pm when we would meet up for Tea and
head out for our afternoon drive. I was still fighting a little bit of jet lag
and ended up taking an hour-long nap during the break. That was so nice.
After a nice lunch, we headed back out. The afternoon was hot
and many of the animals seemed to be in hiding during the first hour. We did find a second kind of Kingfisher
sitting on a great perch and decided to sit there and patiently watch it,
waiting for it to hunt. It didn’t do anything for a good 20 minutes but then
got busy flying down to the ground and back up to its perch, until we finally
saw it catch a cricket. I got some
decent shots of it with the cricket in its mouth and we watched it slowly spin
the thing around until it could swallow it.
Patience paid off, and we were happy with the shots we got so moved on
to see what else we could find.
As we came up on this nice forest area, we could see the
trees shaking like crazy and discovered a whole family of monkeys climbing
through the branches and playing in the grass. We pulled over and photographed
them for the next 30-45 minutes. It was fun watching the little ones chase each
other back and forth, some jumping from tree to tree, two little ones hanging
from a branch and then dropping to the ground, only to run back up and do it
all again.
There was a baby nursing from its mom, high up in a tree
near us, and at one point he must have bitten down too hard because the mom
smacked him on the head to make him stop.
She then groomed him for a bit before he went back to nursing, and I
couldn’t help but laugh a little about how much they reminded me of small human
kids in how they played and behaved.
We moved on from the monkeys after getting a call that there
was a pride of Lions nearby with a kill and we went to look for them. We got to the location where the kill was
located, but it was off the road and deep in some brush, and all we saw there
were dozens of Vultures in the trees around there… all patiently waiting for
the Lions to finish up so they could clean up anything left over. We could barely make out one Lion on the
ground through the bushes, but it was sleeping and there was no good shot of
it. I guess I’ll have to wait to get my
first real look at a Lion in the wild.
It was getting late, and the sun was going down so we stared
to work our way back to camp. We saw a
few more Zebra and some other birds including a Hornbill, which were much
prettier in person than I realized. I
got a photo of one and when looking at it on the back of my camera, realized it
almost looked more like a painting than a real bird. I need to keep my eyes open and try to get an
even better shot of one if I can.
We got to camp and had another nice dinner. After dinner it was time to pack as we were
moving on to our next location after tomorrow morning’s game drive.
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