Had another lovely breakfast and jumped into the truck, keen for more animal sightings.
Once threw the gates and after only a few minutes, we came across our first family of elephants.
The first of many....
These graceful animals are so quiet, and move around in families.
Next up we were lucky enough to see another rhino! One of the girls on this trip has done all of east Africa and the route from Nairobi to Victoria falls and didn't see a rhino until this trip!
This guy came super close! And round the front of the truck. We then headed up to a few watering holes to see more giraffes, zebras and springbok.
We then turned a corner to get to another watering hole and came across this situation...
Yes they're all elephants...
Well except for the one rhino...
This guy was a particular favourite, throwing mud around having a whale of a time to try to keep cool.
We headed to camp, which was in the middle of the park, had lunch in the much needed shade and headed to the pool to cool down.
The afternoon was spent with Stevie on leopard watch... which was sadly fruitless.. and then going to the etosha pan, a huge dried up lake in the middle of the part.
The rest of the game drive we continued to see red heart beasts, xebras. Giraffes. Wilderbeast. Then headed back to camp for spaghetti bolognese, a couple of savannahs and to gear up for a night trip to the watering hole.
We really wanted to do a night game drive, however when we tried to book only 8 spaces were available and 18 of us wanted to do it. Sadly our names didn't get draw out of the hat. At breakfast two of the girls gifted us they're places because they were going on to the next bit of the trip, up to vic falls. However on arrival at camp at lunch, the lodge had mysteriously lost the bookings. So none of us got to go.
However the camp site was in the middle of the park, it's the only one inside. It had a walk way down to a viewing platform over a watering hole.
We headed down around 9, a little scared as we'd been told horror stories about the honey badgers, these evil little fox/badger/ skunks who attack anything than moves and eat snakes and rats.
We got to the viewing platform, everyone was stoney silent. You could hear a pin drop. At first we just saw a few jackals, but then a rhino emerged out of no where...hung around for around twenty minutes, whilst some hyenas darted in and out of the tree line. The rhino then scurried back into the bushes and a few minutes later another rhino with a baby rhino emerged and the larger rhino shortly followed back. It was so magical!
We were so lucky with the sightings. We headed back trying to avoid honey badgers again... for hopefully the last night in the tent....
Every day seems to be better and more magical than the last. Those elephants look amazing and you got so close. You must have tones of photos. Sounds like you made lots of friends too. How nice of them to give you their places even though it didn't work out. Wow wow wow! Magic!
ReplyDeletewere the elephants and rhino having a staring competition? Yiu could use so many if these photos for the travel magazine.
ReplyDelete