Bellisima Elefante!

We were joined for our afternoon drive by a couple from Parma, Italy on their honeymoon. They were very excited to see the elephants. How do we tell these 'newbies' that the elephants are but a small part of everything they will encounter? Guess they will figure it out without is!

We found baboons with small babies and of course several groups of impala.

We had what Donald described as his best spotting of hippos. More than seeing just ears and a snout sticking out of the water, they were walking in the river reeds in the reeds on some sand.

As we moved closer to them another truck from Mala Mala also made its way down. Unfortunately the other truck quickly got stuck in the sand. The 6 passengers sat tight(one NEVER stands up or gets out of the Land Rover) as Donald and their driver worked together to pull them out. Again, we were struck by the professionalism, the friendship, the camaraderie that the rangers all share.

Leaving the hippos we turned a corner and right in front of us was a leopard. He is called Bicycle Crossing leopard. So named because as the workers at Mala Mala ride their bikes across the bridge to work they have often encountered this leopard.

While we had our sundowners there was word of a lioness nearby. We drove over to find her. There were impala very close to her and she went back and forth between being interested and just hanging out like a big 'ole cat. We watched her scratch her paws against a tree, groom herself and give a true lion roar calling the other lioness. When she did not get a response from the other lion she showed a bit of interest in the impala. Eventually she (and we) gave up and went back for dinner.

We were late getting back to camp so 2 showers and 20 minutes later we walked into the bar. Dinner was held in the boma with a nice fire and the weather was perfect for it. We ended the night in the bar with the Lia and Gabrielle (the Italian honeymooners) and our ranger Donald.

As we walked back to our khaya it struck us that we had one more drive left before we'd have to leave. Not a nice thought....

PS...now that we are in Capetown, there may be enough bandwidth to start uploading some pix. I took about 400 per day at Mala Mala.  Hopefully some of those came out. I'll add the Flickr link to future posts as I upload pix.