Back to Africa; Chumbe Island & Kenya

We arrived at Garonga Safari Camp yesterday in time for lunch. Our camp is located at the corner of a dry riverbed. There are a couple of ponds within view. When we arrived there were three elephants near one of the ponds. During our lunch we watched them at the closer pond. They showered themselves and splashed water.
In our evening game drive we saw a giraffe and a few Impala.

From what we have seen on TV and in movies we expected to see some grassy plains where it would be easy to spot animals. Where we are there is none of that. There are trees of varying heights up to possibly 40 feet tall and there is a lot of dry underbrush. There are larger trees near the water channels. Game spotting is not so easy here. There are many game reserves in the area on the West side of Kruger Park. Most are fenced. There is no migration happening here.

On our morning drive today we started off by seeing some Impala, two Wart Hogs, a couple of Wildebeests; some Yellow-bill Horn Bill birds and two Zebras.

We thought most of the animals we expected to see would be in herds. Mostly, the ones we saw were alone or in pairs.

Then it started to get interesting. We saw a herd of about 40 impala.

After cruising around for a while our tracker got onto the trail of a pair of white Rhinoceros. To show us how fresh the rhinoceros dung was our driver wrung some water out of it. Then he put some of it in his mouth explaining that it was "only grass". When offered a chance to try it, all 5 of us (clients) declined. Anyway, while our tracker was following the rhinos we had tea. Then our tracker returned and told us that he had found the Rhinos. We set out on foot and found them grazing on a little flat on the other side of a nearly-dry creek. We were probably about 75 yards away. That is an appropriate distance. We did not disturb them, but we did get a good look at them. .

By the time we finished there we were already late for breakfast so we started making a beeline back to camp. Our intention was to stop for nothing - except for a lion or other cat.

That is when the herds started popping out of the woodwork, so to speak. First there were Giraffes and Zzebras grazing together. Some of them were on or near the road. Both the Giraffes and Zebra ranged in age from yearlings to mature adults. Those male Giraffes are really impressive. I could walk under their bellies (if they would let me) without bending over. There were about eight Giraffes and 6 Zebras. That slowed us down a little bit. Then a short while later there were more Giraffes; and more Zebras; then several Wildebeasts; then a herd of large deer (I will call them antelope for the moment but that is probably not accurate). Since they were not on the road we did not even slow down for them.

After we returned to camp and had breakfast my wife returned to our cabin to find a very large elephant about 80 feet from our porch. He hung around for at lest 15 minutes. When two others passed by (after one of them knocked a tree over) our elephant joined them. The three continued to perform for us for another 10 minutes.

We are being awed by it all. It is hard to believe we are finally here and seeing what we are seeing.

Tomorrow night we are planning to spend the night on a platform in a tree.

This is the first of three game camps we plan to visit.