Medikwe Continued

Alrighty: yesterday morning. We started out with a bang: a mother leopard with her cub. She was well-camouflaged up on the mountain, but our guide quickly spotted her. We then came upon a group of giraffes, gnawing on tree branches, and we followed them for about twenty minutes. After driving for a bit, we caught a group of springbok, which are basically antelope that are fond of springing. It was too cute to watch them jump around!

Lauren and I took a pretty lengthy nap after that. When I got up to go on the afternoon safari, I looked up and, lo and behold, a giraffe was in the backyard less than 50 feet away! I grabbed my camera, but that giraffe had bolted - as giraffes are obviously prone to do.

However, the evening safari made up for that disappointment. We saw a warthog that we referred to as Pumba and then saw some kudu. And then we heard on the guide's radio about a group of elephants that was making its way to a waterhole. We quickly headed their direction, but as we were taking a shortcut, a new herd (I think it's actually called a "crash") of elephants trekked out in front of us, cutting us off. We patiently waited for all of them to make their way, and then we continued to the waterhole. At this location, there is a ridge that circles around for about two hundred feet, and then it slopes off to the water below. It's about eight feet wide, which is enough for the vehicles.

So we go up to about the middle of the ridge and camp out for a while. It's lovely: the setting sun blazes over the landscape while around 50 elephants play around in the water. However, there was this one amorous elephant. He started to make a move on a female elephant, and Marc goes, "Oh, there's a great shot!" I thought, "Yeah - if you're a pervert." It was ridiculous, though, because Female Elephant was clearly not interested. Everyone was making the most horrible comments!

But the excitement didn't end there. Because of all the baby elephants around, a few mothers had been unsettled. Marc showed us that the stress marks were showing up on nearly all their faces. We had been shoo-shooed by the matriarch, but we weren't too scared. In fact, we were gazing at the scene quite peacefully when the matriarch flapped her ears, trumpeted loudly, and charged us! Marc yelled and banged loudly on the side of the vehicle, reversing as quickly as possible! Did I mention - we had no rifle on hand?

I think it's safe to say that was the closest we've come to wetting our pants.

We ate another adventurous dinner and headed to bed. Lauren stated that she most certainly was not getting up in the morning for the safari. And she did pick a good one to miss.

So that is the excitement we've been party to, and I'm sure there will be more tonight. Stay tuned!