This is the 6th safari for one of our fellow travelers, Maire (pronounced “maura”), from Canada. She describes them as similar to baseball: long boring periods of not much followed by a homerun. This day was definitely like that: lots of nothing, a couple of hits, and finally an over-the-fence homerun late in the evening.

This is our first full day of safari. We were asked to meet at base camp at 5:30am so here we are. Coffee and some small muffins and we were off.

If you recall the vehicles from the day before, they are open-air. No windshields even. And it was 54 degrees. Which theoretically isn’t all that cold – until you’re in a moving vehicle with no protection. While those specific details were left out of the 17-page planning document they provided, they at least advised us to pack for cold mornings, so that’s why everyone is dressed like that.

It’s a bit early to be out and about, but there’s no other way to catch shots like this giraffe and tree silhouetted against the sunrise. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? That bar across the top is the Land Cruiser, which gives you an idea of how close we were.

We also watched this very entertaining troop of baboons which had climbed these electrical towers and were starting their descent. Some of them chose to slide down the thick metal stabilizing cables which were slanted at a comfortable 45 degrees. Hilarious. Too far away to capture on video or still photo but a sight we will never forget for sure.

We made it to the official entrance of Hwange National Park right at 7am, which means for over an hour we were just on the land leased by the lodges. It’s a big space. The distance to various points within the park is expressed in kilometers – some over 50.

Our first daytime giraffe in the middle of a herd of zebras.

An observation deck and restroom in the park where we stopped for breakfast.

The guides set up breakfast in front of the jeeps, just like at sundowners the night before. Muffins, egg & bacon sandwiches, instant coffee, juice. It worked.

With zebras across the watering hole, this was our breakfast view.

With the sun out it was warm enough to take off our beanies. While in the Land Cruisers we also had these quilted ponchos to wear courtesy of the lodge which were quite effective keeping cold and wind out.

Who knows how many kinds of birds we’ve seen already (especially as of this writing well into day 4). I quickly quit taking photos of them because they were rarely close enough to capture. And after about the 3rd one gave up on names. So don’t ask me about the ones above but they were a beautiful blue color and, like the ones below, not shy. Clearly, they were used to people dropping food, if not outright feeding them as I caught a guy in a vehicle who pulled up after us doing – much to the chagrin of his wife. “How could you!?” There are big signs asking you NOT to feed the animals. People food is really dangerous to these guys in the wild so it’s not a good idea to give them anything.

This is a hornbill, related to the version which is Zazu in The Lion King; I only know this because Gail kept calling them Zazu!

A dead tree still standing. The wood becomes very strong and is still useable.

Just left of center is the rear and side view of a hippo facing away from us. This is the closest we’d gotten to one yet. We’ve seen others but usually just eyes popping out of the water and difficult to spot.

These two photos are just to record terrain changes – woods above, plains below. They were taken 13 minutes apart.

We made it back to camp about 11:45am. So that was a 6-hour safari drive where not much happened. Somehow it wasn’t boring. Above is a shot I took for the sole purpose of showing more of the lodge: that’s our room on the left, and the one Sheryl & Jim are in on the right. So, some space between each one. We believe the lodge was full and there was maybe 20 people there total; I think according to the website it’s only 12 rooms.

Lunch was at 1pm at the main camp: a simple salad and beef lasagna.

Ash had signed up for the vegetarian options (although technically he isn’t, just doesn’t eat beef or pork) and was served a vegetable stir fry with noodles.

A lovely lemon meringue.

We had the afternoon free and I worked on Saturday’s blog (on Sunday afternoon, didn’t finish until Monday night), with this view. Not too shabby. The Wi-Fi was slow; I just did the writing and uploaded photos and indicated where I wanted to add a video. I uploaded all those Monday night when we got to Chobe.

We went out again about 4pm. Right away we found ourselves nearly surrounded by buffalo.

Look at the horizon to see how far back these go – there were hundreds; someone guessed 800 although we think maybe it was more like 500. A bunch of buffalo regardless.

Our closest elephant encounter yet. We had a similar one on the other side of the vehicle shortly after this. No one moved, everyone talked in whispers. Apparently, the reason none of the animals bother us is they don’t perceive the vehicle to be a threat or prey. As long as they can’t differentiate the people from the vehicle – perceive it all as one – then it’s fine. So, no waving, shouting, camera flashes, or anything like that. This all became very important suddenly later in the evening.

These guys got into a little tussle.

Time for our sundowner!

Sundowner Ussie!

A classic African sunset with the beautiful acacia tree. This is the same tree that was in the background of one of the first safari photos from the prior post, the one with impalas and monkeys.

We got back to the lodge about 6:45pm. I hadn’t even sat down yet – we were all ready for 7pm dinner – when one of the field guides yelled “back in the vehicles, the lions are out!” All of the field guides stay in contact via radio and someone still out on a safari drive had spotted a lion tracking buffalo. Our guy had seen tracks but since it was so close to dinner time and dark already we went back. But now that there was official word away we went.

I couldn’t believe me eyes when Rodwell turned the vehicle into the grass with the lights on: sure enough, an entire pride of lions stalking. They are night hunters because it’s easier to track and trick their prey, and then sleep during the day when it’s hot. Their night vision is as good if not better than their day vision, and they communicate with each other by ear and tail movements. Lions – and leopards – are incredibly difficult to spot during the day. You can hear how quiet we are talking.

I love how one of them just sits down to wait. Gail said this kind of sighting is extraordinarily rare, so we felt very privileged to have witnessed it.

This one came over to our left and just sat there for the longest time. Another vehicle came and shined the lights on her. It’s amazing to me that she just sits, doesn’t seem to care that we’re around even though we’re shining bright lights at her. There must’ve been 5 or so safari vehicles all milling about. Eventually she walked off in front of us, never even looked at us.

This was another one who was just sitting behind us for the longest time. Rodwell turned his lights on her as we were getting ready to leave.

Same lion but didn’t use the zoom here. That’s how close she was – maybe 15-20 feet from the vehicle.

We didn’t gather for dinner finally until almost 8pm – we’d been out on the lion escapade almost an hour and it was COLD. Thank god they built a nice fire!

Dinner was oxtail and curry chicken, mashed potatoes, cous cous, vegetables. And theoretically a cheesecake for dessert which I didn’t take a photo of if I in fact had some, which I no longer remember! So long ago…

We went to bed soon after dinner. We were exhausted having been up since 4am and were thankful we didn’t have as early a start the next day – just had to report to camp by 6:45am for breakfast.

This is the entry for Sunday, May 28; I’m posting around 4:45pm Africa time Tuesday, May 30.