Sunday, March 4, 2012

South Africa - Week 4

Good morning to you all.  My last week in South Africa…and what a week it was.  In just a few short days I was able to see the “Big 5” and numerous other animals.  I’ve enjoyed my time here, especially being able to spend 8 weeks of adventures with Pat, but am ready to move on. I just wished that I could have talked Pat into going to Tanzania with me. He's been great fun to be with. I guess I'll just have to convince him to join me on another trip in some other foreign land.

Next I travel to Tanzania and lions that climb trees…that should be interesting.  My brother who lives in Tanzania retires in September so I would suspect that this will be my last trip there. I’d still like to spend some time in Botswana and Namibia as they are supposed to be excellent countries for taking wildlife images…but whether-or-not it will happen is yet to be seen.
 

We had another week of very hot weather and no rain…but in Africa you sort of get used to “very hot and sunny”…which is nice in some ways but makes it somewhat difficult to get good images.  This is true especially between 11am-5pm when most of the animals just want to hide in the shade and wait until it cools off.
So today I need to  wash clothes, pack, fill out my Tanzania Visa application, and make copies of images.  I would have liked to have been able to spend more time with this blog but there's just too much left to do before I take off tomorrow.  However, I was able to put together a few images that I'm sure you'll like. 
You can probably tell that this elephant isn't too happy. This is one of two elephants that became upset when we drove near them. They shook their heads, bugled at us, and let us know that they weren't going to allow us any closer...so we just waited there until the elephants got tired and left.

This week we were lucky as we saw 14  Cape Buffalo. This is the big bull that was watching over his herd.

We saw these two leopard (mother and cub) a few days ago, but the grass was so tall that it made for some interesting images.

The cub was frightened by our vehicle and left but the mother just sat down in the grass and didn't seem to mind us being there.

Eventually the mother decided to go find her cub but kept a weary eye on us to make sure we didn't pose any danger to them.

This little guy is one of four rhinoceros we saw grazing together. It's so unfortunate that poachers are killing these great beast at such alarming numbers. Unless something is done, and soon, I think rhinoceros will become extinct in South Africa as has already happened in several other African countries.

Baby rhinos are just so cute. It saddens me to think that someone would kill this small rhino just for his horn.

 Here's Pat taking photos of the rhinoceros...you can't do that in Austin.

This elephant walked in front of our vehicle to let us know that she didn't want us going any further...which we didn't.

We had three elephants come to the water trough near our camp and once they had quenched their thirst, they decided to take a quick shower. 

As one of the elephant herds was walking past, I spotted this baby playing with a stick.

However...soon one of the older elephants pushed him across the road because he was lagging behind the herd.

 I was getting ready to go on a drive and laid two apples on the table for Pat and I to take with us. But no sooner had I put them down when this Verbet monkey jumped down and stole Pat's apple.  I thought it was pretty funny and took some photos of it eating Pat's apple...and it was all well and good until it jumped back down and quickly stole my apple from my daypack. I didn't even have time to stop it before it had grabbed my apple and was gone.

Pat spotted this Southern Ground Hornbill just as she was running away.

 I saw these African Monark butterflies mating and thought I'd include this image for my brother, Bart.

I had a chance to take this image of the moon after Pat explained to me how to do it. I think I'll try this more often.

 This is a Giant Plated lizard...who hung around long enough for me to get a few images.

Red-billed Oxpeckers de-ticking a Cape Buffalo.

...and did we find the lions. Last night we happened on a pride of 17 lions, most of which were cubs. It was a most special sighting and one I hadn't seen before. We spent about three hours watching them play and I ended up taking more than 1,000 images.  It's just a shame that I can't put more of them in this blog.

Lion cubs everywhere.

They were constantly playing with each other...or ganging up on each other. There were several ages of cubs but they all played well together.

This little guy was worn out from all the playing and just had to sit down and rest.

These two quit playing long enough to watch us for a few moments.


These two lionesses were watching their cubs to make sure everything was alright. It unfortunately started getting dark which made it difficult to take good images. This is one time that I wished I had brought my f/2.8 lens to have been able to get the darker images.
So that's it for this blog...and of course I hope you enjoyed it. I will try to put out another blog next week from Tanzania. Until then, I'm wishing all of you well.  John


1 comment:

  1. More great photos John. The lion cubs are just way too cute. I understand why you took 1000 images. Have a happy birthday this week and be careful. Rochell and Samuel are comming to see us Friday for two weeks. He will be very spoiled in that time. Take care. Doug.

    ReplyDelete