Last Blog from Kariega

Hard to believe 4 weeks have already come and gone.  News highlights/low lights for this week are:

·        This week a mouse drown while swimming in the sink, I guess the life guard was on break.

·        Another mouse received flying lessons after being caught snooping in my closet at 1 in the morning.

·        There are a lot less Waddle trees in the reserve as volunteers: whacked and sawed medium size trees, girdled the big trees, and pulled small tress from the ground. My hand haven’t had calluses like this for years.

·        It has rained for the last three days and all of the roads are closed in the reserve so we haven’t been on any game drives or out of the house very much for the last three days.

·        John and I are fortunate enough to have the only dry room in the house. Most have ceiling leaks and a couple have water running in from outside doors.

·        Justine, the volunteer ranger, cooked Chicken Curry for us one night and pancakes one morning.

·        We got to eat in the Lodge restaurant on Thursday night.

·        We went on an early morning game drive and got great pictures of the lions and elephants.

Here are this week’s pictures.

The star picture I promised.  We only saw stars one night this week. I was experimenting with different exposures this evening trying to find the right combination. I thought I would get another chance to capture some quality pictures, no such luck.

Steppe Buzzard

The Royal Couple

An elephant giving himself a mud bath. The mud protects them from the sun, cools them, and keeps bugs off.

Two lion cubs resting in the shade.

Big male lion on the prowl

A large lion checking out those people with cameras clicking

A cub walking down the road with Mom following close behind

Mom looking for her other cubs

A Zebra colt

Zebra colt with mom

A series of six elephant baby pictures showing them having fun.

Another lion picture

Blesbok Antelopes practicing their dance routine.

Zebras

Water Buffalo who thought we were too close. Notice the rain in the picture.  This is one of the few photos I took in the last three days.

Two hippos checking us out

We are off to Makalali Game Reserve on Monday morning.  I am looking forward to seeing another part of South Africa and a lot less rain. John tells me there are a lot more animals in Makalali so there should be some great photo opportunities.