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This morning was an early start, a little blurry eyed I made my way to reception with my escort in the dark. We soon set off to the entrance of Yala National Park, it took around 30 minutes by the time our guide had bought the tickets. I really, really wanted to see a leopard - I'd be made up if I did, but, the closest we came was some footprints in the sand unfortunately. We did see plenty of other wildlife on the game drive though, crocodiles, mongoose, hares, a golden jackal, spotted deer, peacocks and loads of other birds. Our driver had heard there are 2 female leopards with 2 cubs each in the area and he was doing his best to track them down. Just before we gave up and started heading back for the hotel we stumbled upon a huge wild elephant in the road. He was just plodding along and wasn't bothered by the site of us, we hung around for a while watching him at a distance. After about 10 minutes he started heading in our direction and actually came really close, he wasn't grumpy and just carried on with whatever it was he was
doing. I got a couple of awesome photos and it had to be the highlight of the morning for me. I don't think I'll ever get bored of seeing elephants!
On the way out of the National Park it started to rain, the first rain we've seen since we arrived. It gradually got a bit heavier by the time we finished breakfast it was still coming down. It lasted a couple of hours and the sunny weather returned :-) I spent the afternoon chilling out in the bar waiting for the evening game drive, still hopeful I may see a leopard.We set off at around
3pm for the second of our 2 game drives today, there was a big old rain cloud looming overhead and it wasn't too long before the heavens opened bringing a bit of thunder and lightning with it. We saw plenty of elephants, boar, birds and water buffalo. We were hunting for leopards, but, unfortunately we weren't lucky enough to find any... Having said that, we all know cats don't like playing in the rain! The highlight this afternoon was a big elephant hidden in the bushes having a good old scratch on a tree, it
was lifting its legs and rubbing them on the tree, it then promptly turned round and scratched its bum!! All in all, I've had a fantastic day and a brilliant experience on my first game drive. I can't wait until I can do it again some time. A relaxing evening ahead and a nice lie in -
9:30 start tomorrow for travel to the next location :-) Tour people update: mental guy got incredibly bored about half way through this mornings game drive. He spent a good half hour looking at his watch, huffing and puffing. At one point he declared "this is boring, in fact it's not just boring it's bloody boring!" At this point he got his book out and stuck his fingers in his ears when there was a bull elephant not 6ft away from him! There were a few cross words had... Again and he decided not to join the rest of us on the game drive this evening. I'm so fortunate to have the 4 other people on this tour with me as they're all lovely and thankfully have the same opinion of mental guy as I do!
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Wow!
Such a treat to see elephants in the wild. Oooh 9:30am start, mental guy isn't going to be happy...