What a beautiful day we had! Perfect weather and pretty much the only interaction we had was with wildlife! It felt like we had this place all to ourselves today. We started at Phalaborwa and made it over to Letaba. Then, we followed the river for a bit before heading on down to Olifants. Our pictures really do not do much of this beauty justice. And, I bet you can guess which is our favorite animal so far. Yep, we could sit and watch elephants ALL day. Here is a list of SOME of the wildlife we observed today: velvet monkey, elephant, Burchell's zebra, Cape buffalo, African grey hornbill, red-crested korhaan, fork-tailed dron, bushbuck, Southern yellow-billed hornbill, Southern ground hornbill, dwarf mongoose, impala, red-billed teal, Nile crocodile, Burchell's starling, bateleur, orbi, kudu, African fish-eagle, purple roller, slender mongoose, saddle-billed stork, giraffe, African elephant. I'm sure I missed some. We don't have pictures of them all either.
We waited for some Cape Buffalo to cross the road, then Dax went to get a closer shot near some water. Not me! I'm not getting out our car.
These Burchell's starlings are so beautiful in person.
NOTHING like the nasty starlings we have in Kansas City.
We had a picnic lunch and were surrounded by birds.
Dax has better photos of these hippos. Note, there are also
Nile crocodiles in the water and on the left front bank.
More Nile crocodiles out of the water.
Impala--it is hard to tell which member of the antelope family these characters are. Pretty sure this is an impala. But, we have the opportunity to see 19 members of the antelope family, the impala is merely one. We saw herds of these.
Just some of the landscape.
Our favorite. Herds and herds of them.
A baby.
Love this one!
They are so close to us. We are right in the midst of them.
More of the landscape.
Would be a beautiful painting.
Isn't this Burchell's zebra beautiful?
These Cape Buffalo are a bit unpredictable and don't seem too friendly.
Herds and herds of them.
Giraffe was standing right in the middle of the road.
It surprised us. A nice surprise, I must say.
Tomorrow, we plan to get to the Satara area. Not sure if we can make it to the Skukuza area, too. The problem (and a good problem to have) is that there is SOOO much to observe and absorb, we don't get very far. Loving our time together here! What beautiful memories.
Oh, and of course, we had another police incident. They said we were speeding. Well, since our speedometer and our GPS vary by about 10-12 km/hr, we could have been. Anyway, he was writing out the ticket and told us it would be R750. Then, he said, "How much do you have? Let's make this quick. How much do you have?" Dax pulled out R20. The man laughed. Dax pulled out some more. Finally he settled at R150 and said, "That will be good enough."
We bet these guys probably fight over this particular post/job.
Just taking cash under the table and not writing tickets...geesh.
Anyway, it was only about the equivalent to $15.00. Big deal. :)
Yep...Defiantly Impala!
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you're having such a good time. Can't wait for math again next year: It's one of my favorite subjects!
Hi, Katie! So good to hear from you. Looking forward to having you again next year as well! Enjoy your summer! Oh, and hello to your wonderful family, too!
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