Today was the start of a great adventure. I thought that we would need to hire guides to take us out on safari looking for animals. Instead, we were able to just drive ourselves around on our own and it was incredible.
I started my morning off with a Tab. I'm not a big cola fan and I didn't really care for this one either.
This is the outside of our little cabin that we stayed in. It was fun for a night.
Our trusty rental car/safari van.
Morning coloring.
The map above is one of the reasons why it was so easy to embark on a self-drive safari. The magnetic markers all represent a different animal type. I think the blue was for elephants, white for cheetahs, red for lions, black for leopards, etc. They had these maps at all of the rest camps that were updated by other visitors or rangers throughout the day. We would stop by the rest camp, study the map and plan out our next drive.
We started off a little after 10AM. We were excited to spot our first animals.
A safari drive is a lot of luck and patience. With a professional guide, you'll likely spot animals that most of us novices would miss. There is a leopard hidden in the foliage above. We didn't find this guy on our own, but there was another car pulled over watching the leopard who helped us to spot him. In this case, the leopard's spots make him really difficult to see. He is walking upright smack dab in the middle of the picture and just to the right of the tree in the foreground. Leopards are really tough to see and we were lucky that we found this guy right out of the gate. In our 4.5 days he was the only one that we would see.
Poor Kate. This is a picture that she will regret on her wedding day... We all had to take malaria pills while we were in this area of Africa. Kate is not very good at taking pills. We had hidden her pill in a muffin in an effort to get her to take it. She was crying and struggling. Finally took a bite and then started just crying and letting her chewed food spill out all over her. We were trying so hard not to laugh, while also probably yelling a little too much, which just made things worse for her. Poor girl.
One last picture of the leopard. We were glad that Kate's screaming did not scare him off. This time the leopard is lying down with his head up in the middle of the picture again.
We stopped to watch some impala lock antlers.
Zebra.
Giraffe.
Rhino.
Mama & a baby.
Warthogs and antelope.
Our first elephant.
It never gets old watching elephants in the wild.
We had this little herd all to ourselves as they crossed the road.
The tiny baby.
We stopped at some picnic grounds for lunch.
Nutella on bread.
And carrots dipped in PB.
We saw Zazu, a red-billed hornbill.
Continuing on we made it to the river where we saw our first hippo.
Crocodile.
Monkey.
Wildebeest?
Kudu?
This hippo was resting in a little swamp with a big wound on its back.
Hi little guy. We'll wait for you.
Another kudu.
We finished the day at a fantastic Airbnb near the boarder with Mozambique. Tomorrow: more safari!
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