Male Lion To Ourselves at Sunrise

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Geo: 41.2119, 20.1181

Heard lions during the night and in the early morning. We were #1 at the gate even though we had to break down and load up the car! Decided to head down to the Orpen waterhole and see what we could see.

Were we ever rewarded. Walking across the road in front of us was a very nice maned male lion. He walked over to the waterhole and had a very long drink of water. As the day became brighter we could see more and more of this lion. Finished his drink of water and then started walking along the side of the road and then eventually moved out on to the main road where we and several other cars followed him for awhile before leaving him to his wandering.

We saw some giraffe with the sunlight coming through their hair and made for a lovely picture of giraffe with red hair in the background. Took the Timbavati road over toward the picnic area. Our favorite pullout down to the river still had water in it.

Had brunch at the picnic area and decided to try out one of their cookers. You can rent a large wok type cooking grill with the gaz stove underneath for about 25 rand. The nice news from my point of view is that the cleaning up of that pan is done by the attendant at the picnic site.

We fixed leftover shima and eggs with tortillas. Not too bad. Saw a very big elephant as we headed up to Olifants.

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