During the 3-4 hour gap between
morning and afternoon drives you can get taken to a hide or just laze around
the camp. If you choose the latter Liz
or Garth will ask if you’d like a coolbox brought to you around 12:30 -1:00, and
of course it would be rude to say “No”, so a bottle of chilled Sauvignon Blanc
or Chardonnay arrived every day and we sat on our little viewing deck watching
life on the river.
I’ve already mentioned how Ian is
really into the bird spotting and he was thrilled to see this Malachite
Kingfisher (sadly it’s so tiny and very hard to get a decent photo)
We also have two more or less
resident hippos. When male hippos get
older they tend to choose isolation rather than having to keep fighting the
younger males in the raft; I find it quite sad to see them alone.
After the lunch break we drove
out to the Hippo Hide, which is only about 10 mins. Its built on the side of a waterhole and when
the water is full, you’re sitting eye height with the hippos, but at this time
of year with low water levels you look down on them a bit, but certainly not as
much as if you were viewing from the bank.
The little birds sitting on their
backs are ox peckers which help clean wounds and remove parasites from their
skin.
You also tend to find quite a lot
of crocodiles around as they feed off the fish which are attracted by the hippo
poo.
Hippos also rotate their tails furiously to spread their poo around (probably territory marking or to attract the
opposite sex) - no photo but the sight and sound is hilarious
Around 4-4:30pm they “wake up”
and quite a lot of yawning goes on.
For our sundowner we watched yet
more hippos having a splash around
The evening drive was a bit
quiet, just a few giraffe which didn’t photograph very well
and these painted dogs which most
people seem to get quite excited about.
I know they are very rare but they do nothing for me!
After dinner we went back to the room and I noticed what I thought was a rolled up leaf on the floor, so I went to pick it up. It jumped - a frog, and there were another two on the bed. I managed to put out 2 of them but the third one disappeared.