We got up this morning and went for our last game drive with Chewie and Conright. We are all going to miss this place as they have made this a wonderful and enriching experience. Monica has also done a wonderful job in making sure that Lana and Dave had delightful lactose free meals.
The first thing we came upon this morning was a small herd of elephants with a baby. Chewie could tell that the baby was 3-4 years old because they grow to reach the height of the bottom of their mother's belly when they are just one and this one was taller than that. Elephants live about 60 years. You only see about a third of their tusks the rest is internal. A full grown male eats about 450 kg of food per day. An elephant can hold 20 liters of water in his stomach in case of drought and then can dispense it to cool off a dehydrated baby for example. Elephants have 5 toenails on each of the front feet and 4 on the back. Elephants have 6 sets of teeth and are replace by a sort of conveyor system from the back of the mouth. They get their last set of teeth when they are about 45 years old and when those wear out they have to relocate near a river to take advantage of the softer reeds that grow there. Apparently this is where the idea of an elephant bony yard comes from. The old ones die and fall in the river - their bones are carried along by the water and deposited near a bank further downstream. So it is not like they died at the site of all the bones, but the bones were carried downstream to a particular place. We then came upon a huge herd of Cape buffalo (about 500 of them). Chewie just stopped the truck at one point and we watched as they lumbered past us. We were lucky as we saw some calves in the herd. Usually the females and the calves are surrounded by the males, but because they were on the move and didn't perceive us as a threat, they were a bit more spread out. We did see one old bull with a leg injury (he was limping), but he was not the last one to go by. If there had been lions around though, he would have been a prime target. At one point as we were watching them, Juanita dropped her cell phone off the truck. A few of the bulls at the end of the line looked over at her or it (hard to tell) for some time so we weren't sure what was going to happen. Luckily, they decided to ignore it and continued across the road. When they had all passed, Conright graciously jumped down and retrieved it for her and it seemed none the worse for falling to the ground. I thought that was a wonderful sighting for our last day, but it got even better! We tracked 2 white rhinos through the bush and got to see them at very close range. They were a mother and daughter pair and it was wonderful to see them. It was very easy to distinguish them from the black rhino as they are so much bigger and they have a square and wide mouth. Just as we got back to the lodge, we saw a nesting pair of the white-backed vultures.
We went back to our "house" named Lion to gather our bags and last minute items. Dave happened to look out our glass door to the deck and spotted elephants drinking at the waterhole right in front of us! I had just put my camera away for the flight, but I dragged it out again and got some wonderful shots of them. One of them was a very sloppy drinker and we started laughing as he was getting it everywhere. We waited as long as we could and then hightailed it to the main deck to watch with the others who had gathered there. In all, there were 11 elephants at the waterhole and I think they came, not just to drink, but to say good-bye to us. When it was time, we gave hugs all around and then hopped into the Toyota one last time. Conright was our driver and we were given a splendid send-off. On our way to the main lodge where we were to transfer to a van for our ride to the airport, we saw 5 zebras, some warthogs. a herd of impala, 2 buzzards flying overhead, a mongoose, a number of hornbills (Vicky has nicknamed them corndogs as she misunderstood what I said last night when I spotted them), some kudus, a monkey, and a tight group of wildebeests lying down near a waterhole. When we got into the van, we ate the breakfast Monica packed for us and just a little way down the road we were greeted by a very tall giraffe just standing in the middle. He eventually moved and we were on our way. We had a very short (1 hour) flight back to Johannesburg and were met at the airport by Adelaide, who will help us tomorrow as we go back to the airport to fly to Victoria Falls. Our rooms weren't ready at the hotel so some of the group had lunch, but I wasn't hungry so I sat and watched bags. We eventually got in the rooms around 3 and we will meet John and Lana for dinner at 6:30. Victoria Falls is where we will meet our guide, Vimbai, and she will accompany us for the rest of our time here. She will help us cross the border into Botswana and then we will travel to our new safari camp. We will also be joined by the 6 others who did not go on the pre-trip. I imagine that this is the last time we will have wi-fi for quite a while (maybe the rest of the trip) so I will try to get some pictures up before dinner time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment