First Time Lucky Africa

The drive was fairly slow to start, a few eagles in distant treetops but not much else.  A short walk was tried in the hopes of finding lion tracks but no bueno.  We did see a giant eagle owl fly past extremely briefly. Of course even if there isn't anything "exciting" there is always something beautiful - like waterbuck Driving on - "lions!"  The same four lionesses that had walked through camp last night.  Lounging on a little rise, very relaxed in the morning sun.  We spent a long time watching them, with a photographer from National Geographic.  He is doing a lot of filming of the lionesses and was hoping that they'd bring out a cub. Lounging lioness Once the lionesses had moved off over the hill we moved on as well, stopping at Long Pool. Photographers getting ready . . . . . . for this. After that we drove through the open plains for a while - quite different from the bush and forest we'd been in up un...

Everyone was very eager to get going so we were loaded in the Landdrover and driving out of camp at 6am.  We headed up river in the hopes of seeing wild dogs but the scientists tracking them said they were 2km into the bush. The African Wild Dog tracking team Reversing direction we headed back to the lion tracks we'd seen earlier.  Alex found where they'd left the road but the tracks looked to be from last night. White Fronted Bee-eater On we went, to find the remarkable Boswell at Mucheni Camp.  Boswell is a large bull elephant who is famous for being able to stand on his hind legs and reach branches that the other elephants can't.  There are only a few elephants at Mana Pools who do this so it's another marvellous part of visiting this park. Boswell was very obliging and stood on his hind legs not long after we'd got out of the Landy.  What wasn't quite so obliging was the somewhat distracting surroundings of vehicles and tents. ...

The wakeup call came at 5am, with a light breakfast at 5:30. Alex suggested we hang around camp for a while, just in case the wild dogs came through on a hunt. No sign of the dogs so we set off on foot. It was such a beautiful place to walk - a mix of dry browns and greys with bright green leaves, red kigelia flowers, yellow wild mangos and the bright red of a tree top creeper. Gradually we wandered on, stopping to learn about the different plants as we came across them. A very pleasant hour or so was spent at Ndundugu pan quietly watching baboons, impala, banded mongoose and so many birds. Yellow Billed Stork A male Giant African Kingfisher was spotted very close to where we were sitting. Just as Ben was getting ready for a shot the male was chased off by a female. She very obliging posed on the branch for a long time, then dived into the water right in front of us, completely submerging. No photo, but it was a beautiful thing to watch. The beautiful fe...