OK
our first little fight last night. I was too afraid to sleep with
all the tent blinds open, and of course Andre wanted everything open.
I won, it is my birthday present that we are here, so there....
Many noises when we first went to bed but after that a pretty quiet
night, or at least we slept through everything.
First
thing this morning I went out on the little platform outside the
front door of our tent and I could see the heads of baboons coming up
over the hill in front of me. I jumped back into the tent and
watched what had to be a troop of at least 20 baboons cross within a
few feet of us. From very young, to the bigger males, unbelievable.
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| Sunrise View from Tent |
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| Baboons coming up over the hill right in front of me! |
Off
to breakfast then we meet Felix for our first drive of the day. It
is much cooler this morning, probably not even 15, it was cold enough
to put on a sweat shirt when we first woke up, but it will not take
long for the sun to warm us up. We saw no one out for the first hour
or so, mostly we stopped to look at birds, trees, hardly any big
animals around yet. Felix tells us first thing in the morning we
will not see them, but as it gets warmer they will start heading
towards the water to drink. Probably the hilight of the morning
drive was is coming across 2 lion on either side of the river bank
with a zebra pretty much all eaten in the shade under one of the
lions.
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| Poor zebra |
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| Happy lion |
The lions were full and not moving much and all of a sudden
there was a big commotion on the other side of the river from us, a
cheetah was just beyond the lion and was trying to catch one of the
impala. The cheetah had scared the impala towards the lion, so it
decided it might get another easy meal, but missed as well. We
couldn't see the cheetah from our vantage point, but we moved further
along the river and had a pretty good view of it, though quite far
away. Some elephants were now heading down to the river as well,
Andre wanted a good shot so asked Felix if we could move a little
once the other jeeps had left, lost in translation and Felix drove us
back to where we had first seen the chase. Next was amazing, we
could see that there were 3
babies and 2 mom elephants coming down the river from further up and
would need to pass right in front of one of the hidden lions. You
could see that the elephants sensed danger, they put the babies
between the adults and moved forward, the lion wanted nothing to do
with them and came up the river bank directly in front of us.
Amazing. Yes, we are actually seeing this live. I still can't believe we
are actually here.
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| Elephants chase the lions away |
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| Very tiny baby! |
This park is not too busy either, the busiest we've
seen is when the cheetah was spotted, I think it was quite rare to
see them in this park. At the cheetah there was about 10 jeeps
watching, where the lion came up right beside our jeep later there
were 3 of us. Our guide sometimes talks to others when we pass him
on the road, but so far we haven't seen him using a radio. Some of
the companies have so many jeeps out here, Leopard Tours seems like
every second jeep, and they seem to be radioing each other. I
personally like the peace and quiet. When you stop to see something
Felix always turns the vehicle off, and the noises are amazing.
First thing this morning the bird calls were fantastic. Often when
you stop for something, it actually is something else that you spot
and hang around to watch. The dik dik deer here are so fun, they are
maximum 5 kg, nearly the size of a very big rabbit, and they are
deer. So much smaller than even a newborn fawn. I can't imagine
what a baby ones size would be.
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| Dik Dik, full grown and so small! |
Another
highlight of the morning is for sure the elephants mud baths.
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| Fun to spray everyone! |
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| I love mud! |
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| Nothing like a roll in the mud |
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| More mud |
Towards the end of our morning drive we head down towards the river
for the most amazing sites. Hundreds of wildebeest, zeebras,
ostrich, warthogs, and elephants can all be seen at the river bank.
Of course the very most fun to watch are the elephants. Not only do
they drink, but they are having a grand time covering themselves in
mud and scratching on the rocks. The babies plunk themselves right
down in the mud and are pretty much a muddy mess when they come up.
This is how we ended the morning, I have no idea what Felix has
planned to top this morning, but we have now had lunch, a little nap,
are enjoying the view until 4PM when Felix says we will go out again.
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| Juvenile Tawny Eagle |
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| Love this tree and elephant picture! |
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| Follow the leader |
A
couple of notes about where we are staying. There is no electricity
during the day, for a couple of hours in the morning and evening
there are power bars put out at the front desk for everyone to charge
whatever they need up. It is very funny looking at all the
electronics, how times have changed. The power bars are packed, with I
think around 60 people staying here, and no electricity in anyones
tents this is our chance to charge up. Andre and I are lucky, we
must be the only north americans here because we are the only ones
using our voltage power bar. It is nice, we don't need any
converters, we can just plug whatever we want in. Andre has 3
cameras he is keeping going, I have my ereader, and the laptop. Andre
has an electric razor, but haven't seen that come out yet :). What
we don't charge here can be charged in our jeep, so all is well.
The
other funny thing here is last night we had to have had a first time
ever waiter. Poor guy, very broken english, and maybe has never
eaten in a restaurant before. First I said I just wanted water, then
Andre ordered a beer, then Andre said he would have water too, and I
then decided to order a glass of white wine. This just sent him over
the top. The poor kid he looks about 15. Anyway getting across 2
water was so difficult, but it didn't take long to figure out why, he
came back to the table with 2- 1.5 litres of bottled water for us.
Now we had to figure out how to return one, I can't wait to see what
our bill says when we leave. At breakfast this morning we have the
same waiter again, but this time someone comes over after he asks us
if we want coffee, she tells us that he is a new waiter, we told her
we knew. Today for lunch we are back at the lodge instead of a box
lunch, yep the same waiter again, we now just go right to him as we
love it, this time we ask him if we can sit at the table by the
window, no because there are no napkins on the table yet, but he says
if we wait 5 minutes he will go get some, ummm no that is OK we will
sit at the window table 3 over from this one. Maybe Andre could get
a job training waiters, it is not too hard to pick up the napkins off
one table and move them to the next, so funny, love it!!
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| Grey-headed Woodpecker |
OK,
Felix has outdone himself again. This afternoon started with us
leaving and me asking if we will see more giraffe in other parks as
we haven't seen many here, turn the corner and a giraffe, thanks
Felix.
We spent a bit of time here then moved on and came across
some monkeys. We stayed here for a while watching a new mother and
father passing a very tiny baby back and forth, so very cute, sure
hope the pictures turn out.
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| Tiny baby being passed back and forth between Mom and Dad |
We moved along again and watched some
elephants in the water, then a bit more and we saw one younger
elephant eating on its own. We stopped here and watched for a good
.5 hour, so fun. The elephant would wrap the grass around it's
trunk, then kick it's trunk to pull the grass out by the roots, then
would bang the grass on the ground to get the dirt and dust off
before eating it. This was repeated over and over, so fun to just
sit quietly and watch.
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| Elephant kicking the grass loose from the ground that she has twirled around her trunk |
From here we were heading further along the
river when another jeep stopped us to tell us there were lions on the
other side of the river, so off we go at breakneck speed. The guys
in front got by some elephants but of course as we got there they
decided to go onto the road. A large tree overhangs the road and the
elephant were eating the fruit that was on the road, and did not want
to move, elephant traffic jam. Felix went fairly close to them a
couple of times, but no way were they letting us by and they started
being a little aggressive to each other and then to the jeep, time to
back away. So, we watched for about 20 minutes, then one left, and
the others followed, off to find the lions. It is pretty easy to
find when there is something extraordinary, there will be a number of
jeeps there. It is now close to closing time at the park, so there
were only 3 jeeps there watching a male and female lion sleeping.
Wow. As the jeeps were getting ready to leave they both got up, a
quick breeding, then back to sleep. Nothing like the baboons, who
take about 3 seconds to breed, the lions took about 30 seconds.
Quite amazing to see this on our first day of lion sightings.
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| Afternoon delight! |
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| Greeeaaaat! |
Back to
the lodge and we meet up with a couple that I knew from the trip
advisor boards that I have been watching would be staying at the same
lodge as us. They are from just outside Vancouver, and they said
funny enough in Kilimanjaro airport the people in front of them in
customs were from Fernie, 2 ladies, Joey know anyone here now? We
went to supper with them, fun to talk to others and compare what we
are both doing. They are in Tanzania for a month, will spend some
time with chimps and then at the beach for the last week. Tomorrow
night we are planning on doing a night
game drive, and they are as
well too I think. Off
to bed around 10, can't wait for tomorrow.
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| Very busy at the river |
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| View of the terrace |
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| Sunset..... |
