Oct 1

Safari #3 PM

Started the afternoon/night safari with seeing giraffe right on the road. They were on both sides of us and even crossed the road! They were so beautiful. Next we traveled by a dam and saw three hippo pop up. They are strictly dependent on water and live in it all day to avoid dehydration. Contrary to popular belief hippo cant swim. They merely stand or slightly float on the bottom. They stay in shallow water because they can drown. They an hold their breath 5-7 min and sleep n the banks at night. Their diet consists of 98% grass. Saw some Kudu and the funny back about them is that they have a circle around their butt and it looks like a bullseye. The sun sets around 6:30. It was a red sunset and the size of the sun has to be three times that of the sun I see back home. We stopped and took tons of pictures. Saw more white rhino. You can tell the difference between white and black because of the color and the white rhinos head is always very low. The black rhino has an upright head. Coming around a corner we saw an elephant feeding, it was right in front of the jeep! He was pretty big but didn’t bother us but got real close. At night when it got really dark we didn’t see much at all. The usual wildebeast, impala, kudu, and zebra. Then out of nowhere a GIGANTIC male elephant was walking down the street. Dwain stopped the jeep and turned off the lights. It was totally dark and we could only hear him scuffing his feet on the pavement. He knew we were there and you could see him flapping his ears to seem bigger. More jeeps were coming from the other direction and Dwain told them to slow down and stop once they saw the elephant. Once the headlights were on the elephant we could just see his outline but they also warded him towards us more. Dwain told us to be very quiet and not to take pictures! It was so hard not to, I mean come on there was a HUGE freakin elephant right in my face and you are telling me not to photo this once in a lifetime moment. The elephant got so close he was literally touching the front of the jeep. He waved his trunk and lifted a foot. Most of the time he just stared at us. I was hoping he would make a signal with his trunk but he didn’t. Finally he didn’t see us as a threat and walked away. The rest of the game drive we were searching for the leopard, we even went back to the place the one group saw it in the morning. No luck. Came back, ate a hearty dinner and then hung out and played cards until 11pm. Coolest part about this night was the lightning storm that came. Lit up the sky every time it cracked, and the shapes were incredible.