Here kitty kitty kitty

Not much happened today other than seeing some wicked wildlife, so here goes some stellar pictures -not tooting my own horn or anything lol-

. . .

Up again at 5am. Yikes!

Not of a lot of activity most of the day. Fell asleep a couple times during our game ride...

Finally got to see a Sable! They are gorgeous <3 <3 ...I feel bad, those guys are mostly black! A cruel joke Africa, tsk tsk tsk.

Did finally get to get close to some Ostrich and their babies!

The female is the brown one

talk about 'rubber necking'

After each game drive, we get greeted with warm smiles and a lovely wet towel !

Damn, we are spoiled !

After a filling and satisfying lunch we popped in the pool, it gets VERY hot at noon. 

We get 4 hours to do whatever before the afternoon drive, so instead of a nap we then drove out to the "Hide" behind the water hole for some sneaky shots of all the animals. 

The "hide" is a steel box covered in large fallen trees, so we can sit hidden right beside the water and be UBER close to the wildlife.

But just like this morning... Not a lot of action, just elephants coming to cool off... I WISH I could have joined in hahaha it was LITERALLY 55 degrees Celsius out in the sun. Ha. Oh my. Hot enough that Jason couldn't even walk back to the tent barefoot on the sand. 

Blows my mind how hot this sand was, and this guy was a Boss and handling the heat.

At 4pm we went out on our afternoon drive (ugh so much driving BUT I can't complain. If we had to walk in the heat, well, no one would enjoy the afternoon lol)

But BAM! Right away we see 2 Painted Dogs. Herds of zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, elephants and one lone waterbuck. 

No, these aren't Hyenas, these cool creatures are "painted or wild dogs"

The guy to the right is an Antelope, not a water buck

Besides the awesome Giraffe, the structure behind him will be another "hide".
Where we can camp out any time of the day to sit to watch the 
animals come and drink -or whatever- at the watering hole

Zebra's get spooked pretty fast, when we show up... they almost always leave

And then!!!!! THREE CHEETAHS!!!! Mwwwwaaaahhaha

So awesome. So awesome. So awesome

If the Painted Dogs hadn't stopped us, we would have just driven right along by, but as we sat there chillin with the dogs, one of the British campers spotted something in a log pile 1/2 a km away... all because the Zebras weren't looking at us. 

Which was not normal.

They were looking at... what?!!!?

So ZOOM ZOOM we went -giggling all the while-

And boom, Cheetahs. These cats were gorgeous. Even tho they were just lounging about, they had this beautiful dangerous grace to them. 

Television never quite accomplishes what really hits your 5 senses.

Literally blows your mind how different it feels when you can look at a wild cat with your own eyes...

WOW.

It's just... freaking... cool.

Don't get me wrong, the small guys get some credit too (termites, chameleons, etc) lol. But I love cats. Meow!

So please enjoy the next 20 pic or so of these guys =D

The Zebras attentively watching every move the cats make, they sure as hell don't want to be dinner

"what ya'll staring at meow?"

Although for their numbers and their quickness, the Cheetah still must stay on alert -not like a Lion- for any larger cats near buy that might make trouble

Don't you just wanna get close for a nice belly rub! ;)

The Painted Dogs came by the opposite side of the water and took a bath.
They had NO idea the Cheetahs were there for a good 5 minutes, but when they did, the female started whoofing and they took off.

Damn kitty, you are purdy!

Itchy back ITCHY BACK!

The other animals waiting patiently for the felines to vacate the water hole, who do they think they are anyway? :P 

Sat there taking pictures for a while. Came to a conclusion that a Zoo will never do this justice. Ever. 

This is just too epic. 

Not to mention unlimited beer and wine while touring around. 

At sunset, we parked by a bunker near a watering hole, cracked a couple beers and had a great chat. The wildebeest were the only guys who came for the evening show, better than nothing!

I cannot remember what this bird is called, but his elongated wing tips give him the look of an ENORMOUS butterfly in the night. It is stunning. Anyone know this bird???
Lol, we almost ran this guy over on our drive back to camp.

One last note... During the game drives one eventually has to go pee, well... going to the bathroom in the middle of dangerous African territory feels like you are painting a target on your head LOL

It just feels like something is lurking near by and will pounce when you are in mid-pee or something.

Or is it just me? ;)

One more blog post to go!

Ferrari Safari

Got to sleep in till 7 =D

(one might think 7am isn't sleeping in, but it is a far cry from the last 4 days of 5 am lol)

(elephants in the back hehehe)

We had our final breakfast and took in the stellar views before we had to say our goodbyes.

Ashley and Julian start their days off when we are back in Victoria Falls, so we plan on meeting up with them again! Whoop

Washy took us 2.5 hours down the road to Main Camp (these roads are still considered game trails, so we were still able to stop and view things along the way),

Wildebeest chillin.

Waiting  for the elephants to cross the road so we could pass lol

Main Camp is close to the highway, and is a huge facility with lots of lodges for guests, but didn't have the awesomeness feel to it at all. No private watering hole, no animals around; meh, glad we aren't staying here.

We swapped drivers, and we met Bullisani (short version 'Bully')from Camp Little Makalolo.

This forest was stunning -the picture doesn't do it justice-
but these trees were HUGE!

Gave Washy a good ol' Canadian bear hug and he sent us on our way.

Venturing down the game trail, we didn't see too much in the first couple hours, but as we got closer to the camp, the terrain changed and wowzas! Out came all the wildlife.

Tonnes of giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, more and more elephants (lol), baboons, and cool looking birds.

I know I am horrible and can't remember what some of the species are called. . .

But I do know there is a Bradfield Hornbill out in the bush somewhere in Africa! (no we didn't find one lol)

So here is a mass load of awesome critters and creatures we saw on our way to camp. . .

Zebras were never taken in by man to ride since they have nasty tempers

We got SUPER close to this guy. . .

Such a poser!

As we are cruising along the road, we come across this little baby elephant. . . he sees us and whips around and just SCREAMS at us!

Then runs away into the bush SCREAMING some more. . . He then turns around and gives us this "BACK OFF - my mom is coming" look hahaha. 

Which then, from the opposite side of the road, mom comes a roaring and rumbling.

Sheesh, the way the little guy was making a racket, you would think we ran him over LOL.

BTW, have I mention yet that Elephants truly sound like dinosaurs??! 

Well, obviously the vocals were taken from elephants to produce those awesome T-rex screams and roars. . . but seriously, they all sound like T-rex when the are all riled up. I wanted to watch "jurassic park" so bad during this trip -hehe-

I think we heard the typical "trumpeting" once. . . but lots of screaming and low (but loud) rumbling

Got to Little Makalolo around 430 with a nice greeting party! 

Got the tour of the place and WOW... we were all blown away. Lol

The door to the left leads to the outside shower
Views the watering hole and there is a big tree above us, which monkeys like to hang out in

The trees on the left aren't actually dead. . .
the dry season is almost at an end and will bloom once the rain hits

Room #5

Dining room #1

Bar - self or full serve (depending on the time of day)

Dining room #2

We had BARELY got comfortable when Bullisani pulled us aside and said "we got a report that a Lion just killed a baby elephant, shall we go and see if we can find him??"

ZERO hesitiation

"YES!"

SO off we go, on a literal "Ferrari Safari" as we speed down trails to beat the sun set and find this male Lion.

And. . . We found him! He just finished eating and was chilling out. 

These cats don't give a crap about us, they tolerate the vehicles and will bolt if one of us gets out (really). We were able to pretty much pull up beside him as he nursed his full belly

As we sat there, this lion's ears prick up, he gets up and starts walking. 

We look to where he is going, and see this younger male about a 1/2 km away walking in our general direction. (TWO LIONS IN ONE NIGHT, oh my are we lucky !)

Male lions aren't super keep on each other, and we thought we might be able to see a giant death match ! Oh snap !

This guy sauntered right by us and kept on going. They two lions must have not cared or were just too full to battle it out for territory. 

Maybe they really are friends lol, who knows.

But they eventually settled back down, made some "ooooohing" noises, and yawed for us to witness their tremendously huge teeth.

Yikes! Having never really paid much attention to lion teeth before, I was blow away by how big they were. . . not to sound naive by any means lol, they are just VERY thick and point straight down. 

Goooood night!

Back at camp, we barely had time to wash our hands before Bullisani found us again to tell us about a Leopard in the area!

Ferrari Safari! Zoom Zoom!

We went looking for this elusive cat for over a 1/2 hour. . .  but we failed. Heard him a couple times, found tracks, but we came up short.

Oh well. We were starving.

Our dinner was a semi traditional African meal; food from the BBQ with an assortment of meats and wonderful sauces.

The only catch. . .

I had to fill up Jason's plate and serve it to him, but before he could take the plate, I HAD TO CURTSY!

If we had gone fully traditional, I would have had to crawl on my knees and served it to him that way.

Lol, when in Africa.

The whole dinner was amazing.

We really feel out of our place when we are fully pampered with the service that has been given to us so far.

Our glasses were empty for maybe 0.001 of a second and already someone is there to fill it up.

Unbelievable service.

The one last awesome part to our dinner, was this bull elephant came wandering in to eat at the trees not 30 feet from us. 

So we got to watch him from our table. . . no barricades remember. . . just professional men with big rifles standing by :P