Safari

Saturday, October 12

Our second day of safari.  We slept enough to feel rested but the unusual animal noises made it hard for mama ears to fully relax in the night.  The girls slept well, however, and seemed to enjoy the silliness of hippo noises. 

We were awakened by the guards at 5:15 so we could get dressed.  Then we were escorted to breakfast at 5:30 and we were on the safari truck at 6.  Quite early but the air was cool and there was a great breeze. I will not go into all the details but rather will let ALL of my pictures speak for themselves.  I think the giraffes were some of the most fun. It is just awe inspiring to see God’s creativity in His creation and feel so wonderfully small in the whole of the world.  We had tea at the sandbar and headed back before lunch. Today, instead of going back through the main gait, we parked the safari truck in a forrested area and took a boat across the croc and hippo infested waters to another truck that took us to our lodge.

Lunch was a delicious vegetable quiche and salad.  Afterwards, we took the girls back and we all took a solid nap.  Again, the African heat is stifling. Melissa and I laughed that when we woke there were outlines of where we had laid on the bed-gross!  We had a snack and beverage and headed back out for our last safari trip. 

Isaac our driver asked if we had anything specific we wanted to see.  We said that although we had seen two lions at a distance and a few elephants, we were hoping to see more up close.  Before we even got back to the boat, we saw a herd of 27 elephants. I find that I am running out of appropriate adjectives to use to describe.  Later, we came close to a lion guarding its fresh kill, a young African buffalo. In all we saw lions, leopards, gifraffe, elephants, Janet’s, mongoose of all species, zebras, impala, poocoo, wart hogs, chameleon,squirrel, hundreds of birds that were named and I don’t remember, crocodiles, hippos, water bucks, painted wild dogs, thousands of baboons/monkey, and many more.  Again, I know it is a lot of pictures.

At the end, our bottoms were bruised from bouncing but we felt happy and considered it a large success.  It is crazy to see these dangerous wild creatures and then wave to little children playing in front of their huts just meters away.  One more reminder of what a different world this is.

Again, we fell asleep with full bellies, in slightly cooler air, listening to sounds that make you brain play animal identification games.