After a delicious dinner last night we headed out again about 9:30
for a night drive around the land belonging to the lodge (the park being
closed). As there is no fencing around the National Park, the animals are
free to roam around this area and right up close to the lodge.
We drove along with a bright spotlight looking for pairs of eyes but
there wasn't a great deal to spot. We
did see bushbaby, spring hare (looked like a baby kangaroo) mongoose and a bat
eared fox. Lighting conditions were such that decent photos weren't
possible.
We'd also opted for the early morning drive on Day 2, so having
had very little sleep we were woken at 5:30 to be at the lodge for coffee and
toast and leave by 6am. We knew it would be cold and put on all the
layers we had, but we didn't realise quite how cold - luckily there were thick
ponchos for us to wear, they looked very strange but certainly kept us warm.
The light was absolutely gorgeous so a few random pics.
These baboons were so cute, the troop was about 200 strong and there were so many babies, I took many, many photos!
Yellow Billed Stork
Fish Eagle
Owlet
After breakfast we headed out for a
full day which involved a 3 hour boat trip with lunch onboard followed by 3 or
so hours through the National Park to get home. The Lodge use 2.5L
Land Rover vehicles for the game drives and these seat 9 plus the two seats in
the front cab but so far we’ve been max 6 + driver so there is ample room to
move around. They’re quite well padded so that helps absorb the bumps
along the way but as they are open sided/fronted it can get somewhat breezy at
times. To pick up the boat entailed an hour and a half’s drive along a
completely straight, tarmac road and although the speed was probably only 40mph
the wind in our faces and through our hair was incredible – it felt like little
needles! Patti was particular suffering from the wind through her earlier
and immaculately blow dried hair so I suggested she wrap her scarf around her
head to lessen the wind. But as soon as she opened the scarf, the wind
whipped it straight into her face and there she sat for a while covered in her
headscarf ................
Our boat was a little metal bottom thing with a canopy, probably able to seat 10 but being 6 of us there was plenty of room and luckily Ian and I got to sit at the front.
This little (not – 4m long) croc and Lips parked the boat so close that we could almost touch him. We all sat there watching him for a while, sure in the knowledge that he was watching us too. But when I asked Lips if it was OK to stand up on the prow of the boat, I must have startled the croc and he leapt in the air and crashed into the water. Needless to say I was quite startled too but unfortunately no one got a picture of the croc in flight.
We saw so many elephants and of course I couldn't resist photographing them all but I'll try and keep postings to a few of the more interesting ones.
We stopped to have our picnic lunch on the boat just in front of a herd of Ellie drinking and having a mud bath - it was absolutely amazing.
At one point this fellow came so close we thought he was going to step on the boat. Lips was keeping a watchful eye in case of a change in behaviour but he seemed quite content with us being there.
Sleeping hippo, eye half open
We watched this small herd (about 20) swim across the water to a little island.
Unfortunately these lapwings laid their eggs in the sand so squawked and flapped around trying to persuade the buffalo not to tread on the nests - we don't think they were too successful.
A cute line of Egyptian Geese
These were the only lion we saw, three females dozing in the sun - but at least we saw them which others staying at the lodge didn't.
The remains of someone's lunch
Marabou Stork
More giraffe and zebra - sorry, I can't resist!
As we were about to leave the park Lips suddenly saw a pack of wild dogs which are apparently quite rare in this area, so we spent a little time getting closer and observing these highly patterned animals.
As a consequence we were running out of time (park closes 6:30pm) and Lips had to drive like a lunatic to get us there. It was good fun but a bit of a roller coaster ride particular for Ian and me in the back bouncing around and desperately trying to hold on to all our possessions. We made it out with 2 mins to spare!
There was so much more to tell and photos to share but I'm running out of time so I thought a few is better than none. Nor sure of the internet access where we're off to now but I'm still going to prepare the posts for whenever I can upload then.
