GAME DRIVE 4

 Saturday morning came in pretty cold.  About 40 degrees, maybe 45.  The first hour was pretty chilly, but the Toyota comes with blankets and hot water bottles, so everyone got along just fine.  (Not your image of Africa, is it?)

We set out to find rhinos, as we only have 2 GAME DRIVES left before our departure Sunday morning.

Cold was pretty quickly forgotten, as we came along these ladies in the first 10 minutes.

Yes, she was as close as she looks !

Since she didn't seem to mind our presence, we followed them down to the river.  They were just hanging out, we thought, but then we were told that the 2 males were also coming to the river.  Sure enough, they were soon there.

The younger of the two lionesses left as soon as the males were inbound.  A bit of history might explain this.  Evidently, she was a member of another pride.  She was one of 4 siblings, 3 males and herself.  These 2 inbound male lions (a father / son co-operative) ripped her pride apart a couple of years ago, killing the pride male, her mother and all 3 male siblings.  Somehow, she survived at the tender age of about 2 1/2.  That is not easy or natural for a lion cub, who usually doesn't hunt well enough to make it on their own.  But she did and she eventually paired up with this older lioness.  

It turns out that the older lioness has now mated with the father lion.  She is presumably pregnant right now, although she doesn't really show, especially after the impala that the two females dined on last night, which shows in their full bellies. 

Anyway, back to the drama.  The young female, who is now about 4 years old, is not the forgiving type and is very anxious around the 2 males who killed her entire family.  Even though she should be of cub rearing age and more interested in pairing with the father/son, she is not.  She becomes visibly anxious and leaves whenever they come into range.

What is particularly cruel about the story is that according to Gabriel, the following are likely events.

1. Young lioness eventually mates with father or son
2. Father, now 10, dies (as lions don't too often get past 12)
3. Son cannot defend his pride by himself
4. Other male lions move in and chase or kill the son and all cubs in the pride, which is likely to include the young lioness' first cub.
5. She is hopefully more interested in the next wave of male lions, but who knows?

Anyway, it no longer felt cold with all of this going on.  And you can see that the lions were not bothered by us at all.

While on the river with the lions, we spotted this woolly necked stork.  Not sure what his niche is, but he's a fine looking bird.

Next, we returned to our rhino search.  And we found him!

He really didn't do much.  Laying down in the grass was his most ambitious activity.  You'll note that his horns are sawed off to make him less attractive to poachers.  Apparently, rhino horn is more valuable than gold.  With only about 5,000 white rhinos left in the wild, they are at extreme risk of extinction because of the belief that rhino horn cures cancer.  Pretty crazy stuff, considering that humans cannot even digest keratin.

Three more fabulous stops await us this morning, starting with . . . a herd of elephants.

I'll guess that there were 10 elephants, but it could have been slightly more.  They don't herd up especially tightly, since they are the biggest animals on the planet and pretty much fear no one.  As always, they were very close at times.  We watched them for 20 minutes or so as they meandered through the valley.

Then, up the river to a higher point, where we rounded the corner to find . . . 

about 15 giraffes and 3 zebras.  Somehow, they seem taller in the wild than they do in the zoo.  Awesome watching them move about.

It wasn't far from the giraffe and zebra gathering to the Leopard den.  Basile is the mother and her cub is 12 or 13 weeks old.  These are the same 2 that we saw on GAME DRIVE 1.  They were impossibly cute today.

Its not all about animals (although it is pretty darned close).  During our return to the lodge we saw a type of African violet

and this gorgeous bird

All of this fantastic viewing made us late for brunch, but it was so worth it.

And to top it all off, when we got to the lodge and walked out onto the veranda for brunch, there was ANOTHER HERD of elephants moving through.

What a morning we've had!  I can hardly wait for GAME DRIVE 5.