Of lions' politic and hyena's poop

The day starts early – 5:30am.  Just time for some coffee, and then at 6:00am, we are on the range rover for our morning drive.  We drove for a while, because they had spotted some lions, so we went to visit them.  A big male and 2 females.  

Apparently, there is some lion politics going on in the park right now:  The largest pride lost it’s dominant male, so a big male from another pride seems to be making a move for it:  he has convinced 2 of the females to move with him, and may try to move in, since the remaining males are too young to really take over.  If he does, he will kill all the cubs, so that the females will go back in heat, and he can then procreate.  But that may not work if the remaining females just don’t like him. 

We saw a big old one-tusked elephant, and a bunch of young ones and females stopped by the watering hole.

We had a luxurious breakfast after our ride, and then we went for a bush walk: saw some impalas, but they ran away:  apparently, we are much scarier on foot than in the car:  in the car, we can park right next to them and they don’t care, on foot, we look like humans and thus are scary…..

I learned a lot about tracking on the walk – which involves learning about the different shape, color and consistency of different animals poop -  it’s a lot more interesting than you’d think… for instance, I can now recognize hyena’s crap, because I know that hyenas digest everything very efficiently, so you don’t find fur, or bones in it- the only thing that remains is white balls (about the size of a golf ball) made out of the calcium of all the bones they’ve eaten.  This is not a fact that will greatly help me when I get back to New York – but I still think it’s cool.

Talking of cool:  It’s not cool here! In the afternoon, it gets to 95 degrees, but it is so dry and breezy that it is in fact quite pleasant.

Now, I’m sitting by the pool blogging until “high tea” (basically lunch), after which we’ll go on our second ride of the day.

On the second ride of the day, we went out to look for Cape Buffalos (they look just like water buffalos, but the locals get very offended if you call them that….).  We first found 3 old males cooling off by the water hole, and then an entire heard of younger males, females and young adults.  They surrounded out Range Rover, in a mostly non-threatening way – although the do look a bit scary when they stare at you………..  

 Our ranger says that of the “big five” they are in fact the most dangerous (side note:  the “big five”, which include lions, leopards, rhinoceros, elephants and cape buffalos are called that not because of size, but because they are the most dangerous to hunt – thus used to be the most prized by those who like to shoot wild stuff).  Other side note:  we have now seen all of the “big five” – they are magnificent (the thought of shooting any of them did not cross our mind…. Although the thought of eating us may have crossed theirs….)!

We also saw a lot of giraffes last evening, at sun set, posing for their post card pictures.....

And the usual range of impalas, water bucks, widerbeast (gnu), and other type of antelopes and my favorite- wart hogs:  they are so ugly they are adorable. 

And a “bush baby”, a very small and jumpy primate.

Then a second magnificent dinner on the deck overseeing the bush, and to bed early!