Kapama – Day Three

With Jen feeling much better, we were ready to take in our last full day of safari rides, and this morning we were hoping to see elephants. We woke up for coffee, and headed out with our group. The group dynamic has changed a bit since our first day here, and now Jen and I were with two other couples who had never been on safari before. Some of them joined us last night actually, I just forgot to mention it until today! We are now in the same group as an Italian couple on honeymoon, and a German couple who is just traveling to see the world. Every morning, Jen and I claim the front seats, and somehow we’ve gotten no complaints so far! Yay for fewer brambles to the face and arms!

 

 

Our morning game drive consisted of heading back into lion country, yep… more lions. I wasn’t complaining, though! We saw the lions eating an antelope today, and also ran into some rhino, and lots of more-common game the others had not seen yet (zebra, giraffe, etc..). I know it sounds like we see less and less each tour, but I suppose to some degree I just don’t remember the ones I have seen before as much as the ones that stand out now. Nearing the end of the drive, we again saw elephants!

 

 

.. but they were just outside of our range inside the park. We weren’t allowed to go to that section, but Joe did anyway! We roamed around for a bit before being run off by a few other tours, and again we headed back to the lodge. We’d had just a taste of chasing elephants, but tonight’s drive was supposed to be better for that.

 

 

The rest of the day was spent packing,  catching up on a few days of this blog, and watching the animals roam by. We shopped a bit for gifts, added an “elephant interaction” to our trip tomorrow (which is a meet-and-greet with some elephants in a nearby park), and headed out again. It was our last evening game drive.

 

We were promised elephants, and we ended up getting to see a parade of them! Starting off slow, we tried to track them down, but it is amazing how easily such a large animal can hide here. Ten feet may make all the difference, and today as we drove around they started to emerge from the bushes. One by one, we saw something approaching fifteen elephants all in a row. They popped out onto the road where we snapped a few pictures before they continued on their way. We saw the few-months-old baby elephant as well, hanging close to his mother as they moved. The pictures are great!

 

 

 

 

Speaking of pictures… I’m running out again. only 130 at the beginning of tonight’s drive, and maybe 45 left for all of tomorrow. I’ll be deleting some tonight I think, I’m sure there are some in there that I can remove. I need enough for one more exciting day!

 

 

 

After the elephants, we saw the lions one more time, this time just sleeping, and took a few pictures as the sun set. The night was very quiet for animals, but Jen and I both noticed that the stars were out in force tonight. A new moon brought forth not just stars, but streaks of galaxies spinning in the sky tonight. It was majestic, and I’ve never seem them so clearly before.

 

 

Dinner was outside, and very windy. As I sit in my “tent” lodge it is actually real time right now, and the tent is moving, groaning with the wind. Tomorrow we have a morning game drive, check out at 10:45, head to see the elephants, and then fly to Johannesburg and home to Denver. We leave mid Thursday and arrive mid Friday, but there is a rather large time difference in there as well. We’ll be flying for nearly 24 hours. We’re both tired, I think, and ready for a break. I don’t think I will be able to update after the morning drive, but I’m sure it will have been memorable. We look forward to heading back to the US!