This is for Wednesday, July 30, 2025. It’s 12:20pm as I start on the first half of the day.

This is my view at the moment, sitting on our deck. Ash is resting.

As it goes around here, Elmo woke us up at 5:25am through a yell, then collected us for a light breakfast around 5:55. You always have to be escorted at night with a lantern as a safety precaution against the animals since there are no fences. We are on their land.

The lodge is pretty full. Five Land Cruisers went out about 6:45 for the morning game drive.

As Elmo took us to our room last night, he handed us “bush babies.” These are hot water bottles covered in a fur sleeve to help keep your bed warm at night. When he collected us at breakfast, he asked us to bring them with us, which at first we thought was odd. But they were refilled with hot water and on our seats when we started the drive. You held them in your lap and put a blanket on top of that. It was a comforting way to help stay warm.

It was 46° when we started out this morning. I wore sweats, a long sleeve T-shirt, a fleece jacket, a windbreaker, and then put their fleece lined poncho on top of all of that, primarily because I wanted the hood. I was counting on that poncho being available from my experience the last time.

Before we even left the property, we saw kudu. This is a type of deer that’s common in these parts.

Soon after we left the property, the guides discovered lion tracks. They spent pretty much the rest of the morning tracking two lions. All five vehicles went out in different directions in search of.

More lion tracks. At one point they actually got out of the vehicle and started checking things out, as seen in the top right photo. When they thought they were onto something, the guy that usually sits out on the hood came inside the vehicle instead. 

At this point, they determined that the lions came here to drink water and then reversed their path along the same road. This explained why there were two sets of tracks going in two different directions which had confused them at first.

We continued to see different animals along the way. Here are some water buffaloes.

Wildebeest.

Giraffes.

We crossed much more water today than we did last night. Every time we did it, I was a little sick to my stomach.

We even came across a cheetah, which, at least I had never seen before. I couldn’t get a good photo of it, but Ash managed to capture a nice little clip.

Soon after, we came across the first lion. He was sort of hiding from us, keeping his head down. This was as good as it got.

But soon after we spotted the other one, behind us and to our right, majestically sitting on a mound.

We had crossed three pretty long stretches of water to get to the lions. Now we had to cross back. Each stretch was longer than any of the ones that we did last night. Together, it might’ve been as much as a mile. It was certainly more than half a mile. I kept my eyes closed for much of it because it helped manage whatever was going on in my stomach. I did manage to get the above photo and the video below. 

Once we crossed back over all the water, we stopped for a coffee and pee break. At this point, we had been in the vehicles for well over three hours. I took this photo at 10:07 AM.

We had lunch around 11:30.

A couple of random photos from yesterday that I stole from Ash‘s phone. Above: Me bombing his selfie. Below: a snap on the drive in the evening.

It’s about 1:15 PM. We reconvene with the group at 3:30 for teatime and then the next drive at 4 PM. We have two new people joining us at that time. In the meantime, I’m going to shower at some point and maybe rest a little bit mostly just continue enjoying this view and this really amazing breeze.

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It is now 8:35pm and we are locked into our cabin for the night. Literally. Because baboons know how to work doors so you want to make sure you always lock it 😬

We went back to the lodge at 3:30 for tea time and our next drive at 4pm.

John and Kathleen from Nevada joined us and took the first passenger row where Ash and I had been. We took the last row with Anaka; with Rich, Michelle, and Indira in the middle.

We came across a tower of giraffe – 5 of them for sure, and a 6th one a little further away. I couldn’t get them all in one photo.

We drove around a lot but only had one quick lioness sighting, but she moved away quickly when we were turning around to follow her and never found her again.

We went back over all the water again before it got dark.

We came across this elephant at the end of all the water.

We stopped for sundowners with mokoros there on the water’s edge. Another party got to experience them. We do that tomorrow.

I was playing with this tree and the sunset.

Our full party enjoying the sundowner.

Baby hares just as we were returning to camp. Elmo was shining a light on them. Their mothers had scurried away to the dark brush but were waiting for them.

Dinner was fried hake, a white fish; potato wedges, cooked red cabbage, peas and onions.

With no light pollution here, star gazing is pretty cool. I can’t believe I took these with this phone.

And that’s a wrap for today. More of the same tomorrow but the details are always a surprise!