Zebra with a young one laying down.
We were up at the crack of dawn for the morning drive. It was a very exciting morning as one of the three trucks out reported a wild dog sighting. We circled around as best we could and then there they were! Four dogs inside the locked gates of an abandoned bush camp. We got a few photos but we couldn’t get through the gate and they were on the move. But a rare and exciting sighting nevertheless. We moved on from there and saw some vervet monkeys feeding in a tree and some giraffe. Then we stopped at a field of flowers to watch the beautiful sunbird feeding. My photos were crap, but this is one area where I am trying to improve my camera skills, photographing birds in flight. We have a bird week next week, so we’ll see. Then we saw a group of elephants and a number of different birds. Then we rushed back to camp because 9 of us were going on a weekend excursion game drive to Kruger National Park proper. We packed for the overnight and were off in a half hour. One of the camp drivers, Roerdink, joined us with the hired driver Andrew. Bruce and I, were the two old English speakers and the rest were all under 22 and spoke Dutch so were left to our own devices pretty much. There was definitely a generation gap. Andrew took us from the Oliphant Safari Camp to the entrance to Kruger proper which was about an hour drive. When we got to the gates of Kruger we stopped for a snack and to see the Elephant Museum at Letaba Camp. As you probably know evolution is an ongoing process… as a result of hunters and poachers taking the elephants with the biggest tusks, that gene pool is disappearing and the tusks of existing elephants are shorter than previously. Then we did a five-hour game drive through the park to our destination for the night, Oliphant Rest Camp. On the way we saw zebra, two hippos on land, birds, and elephants but no cats which is what all of us want to see. When we finally got to our camp for the night at 5:30 we had to pay the Conservation Fee for the entering the park, 460 rand ($35). Bruce and I were assigned a rondavel together and we declined the night drive as we’d had enough of the truck and the teenage hijinks. We showered and then be bought some supplies for the morning before we went for a great meal in the camp restaurant washed down with a couple of beer. We returned to our room for the night. Bruce was very happy to be on a bed on the ground rather than the top bunk.
Bruce, is that a Canon, or a cannon? Either way, it's definitely an impressive piece of hardware for shooting anything - wild dogs, large cats, all manner of birds, and of course JAFI.
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