I really appreciate your kind remarks, and am enjoying sharing our trip with you!
We left Elephant Plains right after breakfast. On our morning game drive, we got a good start on seeing the Big Five for the day! There, we saw white rhino and the lions I posted last night. There were 2 males and a female together. Our ranger was quite excited that we saw the lions, as they had not seen lions in about 9 wks! There are not many lions in Sabi right now. A couple of years ago, six big males moved in from Kruger and killed many of the resident lions. There are only about 15 lions there now. Also saw plenty of buffalo, so that was 3 of the 5 early in the day!
We arrived at our next camp, Orpen, where we would stay for two nights. It's small camp, and very laid back! The doors of the little huts don't even have locks on them! So, when we asked for our key, the clerk looked at us like we were from Mars! It was a very hot day - about 100 degrees, we guessed - so we took our time about going back out! The animals were seeking shade as we arrived. We even took a short nap!
Afterwards, we took off toward Satara on the paved road, but couldn't go too far, as we had to be back in camp by 6:00. It was very dry in the area, but we finally started seeing water in the Timbavati River. It was full of elephants spraying themselves with water. So, now had four of the Big Five. So we were hoping for a leopard!
We needed to head back without our leopard, but we couldn't find a good place to turn around, so we continued on for a bit. And then....a huge male leopard in stalk mode crossed the road in front of us! We slowed and saw that he was stalking a small antelope called a duiker. All of a sudden, the duiker took off with the leopard in hot pursuit! But, the leopard wouldn't eat that little guy! He was too fast for him! The leopard stomped around in the shade thoroughly disgusted, wagging his tail the way a mad cat does. So we got a really good sighting of him for about 15 minutes, but no photos because of the shade and evening was falling quickly.
Satisfied with our first Big Five day, we headed back to camp, where we met our neighbors - a delightful couple from Australia. They visit Kruger every year. It does get in your blood, like Yellowstone!
The wind swept up beautiful lightening and thunder, but no rain, so we loved sitting out on our porch, watching that show! It really cooled things off, so we had all our windows opened, hoping to hear lions roaring. Tom (Goldencode) experienced this when he stayed at Orpen, so we were hoping for the same.
We were inside, and heard some rustling around outside, and thought it was our neighbors coming in. The noise continued, so Billy looked out, and it was a honey badger climbing up into our fridge! The fridge was empty, except for some bottled water that we'd put in there. The honey badger was sure enjoying throwing it out of the fridge. Billy yelled at him, and he ran off - for a few minutes, then was back at it! Billy went out on the porch, and shooed the badger off with a towel. Of course, I followed, and the badger ran under our car for a few minutes. He decided that those two rednecks from Georgia weren't gonna get the best of him, so he came out from under the car, and ran toward us. We must've looked like Laurel and Hardy trying to get inside thru the door at the same time! Billy shooed him off again, and we pushed our picnic table up against the fridge door. The next morning, we found our table moved away, and the fridge standing wide open! Wish I had a video of Billy shooing that badger off. We're still laughing about that!
We had hoped to sleep with the windows open, but decided we didn't want to wake up to the terror of a honey badger's revenge! If he could open a refrigerator door, he could certainly get thru our screens!
Here's a few shots from today....
Thanks for looking!
Janis
Beautiful light on that first giraffe! I really like the ellies in the water. Must have been cool to watch the leopard chasing the duiker.
