Animals, animals, animals

By 7:30 Am, we were leaving the hotel and entering Kruger Park, ready for our all-day animal ride.  It was cool:  a windbreaker felt good.  Sinki was our ranger of the day and driver.  The day started slowly with few sightings.  We did see a lion cub or should I say, we saw his ears twitching in front of a bush.  They can be very still and blend in with the surroundings.  We saw giraffes (4 different herds during the day with 4 to 6 in each).  Warthogs were abundant and always in a family group.  At 10:00, we took a potty break.  Kruger is very developed and huge (8000 square miles).  There in the middle of nowhere was a huge souvenir and department store and campground.  On the road again, we spotted some zebra, but it was hard to get a picture.  Finally, we spotted one bull buffalo and felt lucky.  Then we saw the rest of the herd- 20 more.  As we drove along, the driver suddenly stopped, slammed it in reverse, and there was a leopard up in a tree. It is almost unheard of to see a leopard in the daytime.  It leisurely got down and walked off into the bush.  Several times we saw elephants.  We also saw kudu (4th largest antelope)--both female and male with huge horns.  We stopped for a box lunch and filter coffee.  Back on the road, we drove for a long time with no action.  Sometimes on hard surface roads and sometimes on very rough terrain (think farm wagon behind a fast tractor moving over plowed ground). Saw a multitude of birds including the nests of buffalo weaver and the masked weaver.  Also spotted two hippos in a pond below the weaver's nest.  Saw a huge herd of zebras (at least 50) at a distance.  They looked like brown horses, until you used binoculars and then you could clearly see that they were zebras.  The driver spotted a baby hyena laying under a bush right along the road. Also saw two wildebeast bulls enjoying the heat of the day.  Forgot to tell you that by now it was 95 degrees.  The day was almost complete, but we had not seen any rhinos.  Up the road a few kilometers and there were five rhinos off in the distance.  Chuck complained that all his shots were fuzzy.  Just like that they started walking towards us---down the hill, and up towards the road until they were just across the road ditch from us.  By this time at least 15 vehicles were jockeying for position to get good shots of the rhinos.  We finished our shots and escaped the traffic jam.  We headed back to the hotel and spotted a young elephant just before we turned in to the hotel.  What a day! Dinner with friends and lots of conversation