Second Day of Safari

May 7

Up and out at 6. Lovely, clean fresh air. Coffee and muffins, then off for early morning drive. Chilly and bumpy, but gradually the sun warms us. Animals sighted include zebras, impala, rhinos, wildebeests, lions and elephants. Photos below were taken with my iPad. Frustrating not to be able to download from my camera, but I have our travel agent, Ahdina, on the case and hope to have the part when we hit Cape Town in a few days. Meanwhile, I’m dealing with it with great maturity. Aren’t you proud?

After a big buffet breakfast, we set out for a bush walk. Most interesting part of the bush walk turned out to be seeing a leopard up in a tree en route to the walk. The walk itself was about ah hour and a half, accompanied by two rifle-bearing guides. We stopped at various places where one of the guides explained things about the terrain, animal excrement and the like. Okay, but not the highlight of the trip, for sure. Zoe demurred on inhaling elephant dung smoke (Carol did) and in seeing how far she could blow Impala scat out of her mouth (I did).

Back to the lodge for yet another meal–lunch. Too full and tired to eat more than a very little. Back to the room to rest up for the afternoon safari.

Sky was very threatening as we gathered for the afternoon safari and I said to Zoe, “Looks like we may get drenched this afternoon.” She replied, “Well, at least that will be an adventure.” The perfect response to indicate that she totally gets what this is all about. When I told one of the Australian ladies in our jeep about it, she turned to Zoe and said, “Good on ya’.”

Far and away the highlight of the afternoon drive was encountering a pride of lions with two 8-month old cubs. We spent some 45 minutes photographing them, primarily the sparring between the two cubs, which, while not exactly tender, was very endearing. Unfortunately, I can’t attach any of them, but maybe I’ll figure out a way to get them to you later in the trip, if I’m able to get the part that I’m missing in Cape Town. We also saw hippos, various birds and other animals of a type we’d seen before.

Back to the lodge for a good buffet dinner (best part, I thought, was Impala). Before dinner, Phoebe calls and we do FaceTime with her and Jasper in DC. Great to see and talk with the,. We have dinner with the group we go on safari with, and we quite enjoy all of them.

Back to the room to shower, blog and get to bed early in preparation for tomorrow’s 6AM start.

I’m aware that this day may seem unexceptional, maybe even boring, if you’ve never been on safari. You’ll have to just trust me; it wasn’t. In fact it was exhilarating, especially doing it with Zoe. In photos below, note that the last one of Zoe (with the camera) has lions in the background.