Game drive

Game drive
We've been lucky to go on game drives twice a day and see so many different animals - hippos, lions, cheetah, warthog, zebra, giraffe, bushbaby, rhinos (black and white), kudu, impala, jackal, baboon, leopard, elephant and on and on. The animals are so accessible and many so numerous that by the second day while driving in the truck, mom noticed some impala and dismissed them, saying 'oh, it's just the regular animals.'

The game park we're on is not small, but it is much different from the huge national reserves one would come across in Kenya or Tanzania or even at Krueger. It feels a bit like a zoo tour sometimes, but  without the bars or cages and way more dead animals. The trade-off though, is that the animals are very accustomed to the safari trucks and will allow you to get so so close.

We heard the elephants grumbling, rhinos chewing, hippos grunting, zebras...making whatever that sound is. Close seemed a bit too close a couple of times - we startled rhinos around a corner and sent them running and also made a very large lioness very angry when we awoke her from her nap. She got down into a pounce crouch and the lady sitting next to me - and closest to the lion - was suddenly in my lap.

Every day we see many of the same animals and I think 'well, this is going to be same as the last drive' but I am always surprised. The cheetahs sleeping in the grass last time are eating an impala now. The zebra colt is nursing. The hippos are walking on land, the baboons are mating, the rhinos are lounging in the mud with inyala and zebra at the watering hole. Bouncing in the back seat of the truck may be getting a little old, but watching the animals is endlessly entertaining.