Monday's Game Drives

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Our morning started at 7 am as we headed out for our first game drive. Today will be drives through the local game preserve. As we climbed aboard our truck with Shaun, our guide, we were ready to photograph the nearby residents. The first large animals we encountered were impalas, wildebeests, and warthogs. The warthogs however did not hang around long. The impalas were all sizes and included a black impala. At one point we were hoping for two males to engage in a dispute over the females but they greeted each other and moved along. Farther along we stopped by a lake where two hippos were lazily residing along with several different kinds of kingfishers.

We returned to camp for breakfast and an afternoon of leisure before the evening drive and an African style barbeque. During the down time we walked about the camp spotting a couple of birds and finally seeing a family of Vervet monkeys that live in the area. As the name implies hippos frequent the lake by our tent and 4 of them spent much of the day lazing by us.

The evening drive yielded the fight between two Bresboks that we had hoped for in the morning, a beautiful Sable Antelope, several different birds, zebras, Nyalas, and some very poor photos of the hippos on land after dark. The hope for a sighting of a leopard after dark was not to be.

It was after 10 pm by the time we returned to our tent. Tomorrow we travel to another preserve to search for the Big 5 African animals.

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