9/22..Heading Home

Tuesday, 9/22

Michael and Gary joined us for about half the morning drive, before they had to return to the office to check out and begin a drive from Mala Mala to Jo'burg, sightseeing crosscountry with a guide. Driving near the airstrip, we followed a secretary bird for quite a while, which was great fun.  He was moving a little fast for my photo-taking skills, but I did get a shot of him giving up trying to outrun us and taking to the air:

This hornbill sat still for me, so I took his picture.  :>D

We found some of the rhinos grazing cheerfully and moving around at will. There were no other vehicles, and Lucky knew how to park to give us great camera angles without bothering them.

We watched for a while, and then drove along, stopping to see vervet monkeys in a tree,

or eagles, or lilac-breasted rollers. The lilac-breasted rolloers are very colorful, beautiful birds...but their call is far from sweet;  apparently they spent such a long time in the line where the beautiful colors were given out that when they arrived late at the line where birdcalls were distributed, they had to take whatever birdcall that was left.....and all the sweet songs were long gone!  Perhaps the hadeda ibis had the same problem, which would explain a lot, wouldn't it?  We were sort of watching for a herd of Cape buffalo for Susan, as we had only seen one dagga boy at MalaMala and that from a distance, but we never did.

We did find two rhino males, though...one about 40, the other about half that, clearly learning to be a rhino from his older mentor. Lucky drove slowly into the field just far enough that they knew we were there, but we then just sat very quietly, which made the rhinos very curious. Another Land Rover drove up from the other side of the field, and the rhinos turned away from them and started toward us. They seemed curious, not frightened, and came very close to us. At last they seemed to have satisfied their curiosity, turned, and trotted away. What a moment!

They walked away from us, slowly:

and then turned around to come toward us:

and came quite close.  Once their curiosity about us was satisfied, they moved on.

It was time to go find Michael & Gary's ride back to Mala Mala....on the way to the meeting place, we saw dozens of giraffes,some accompanied by zebras,

candelabra trees and wild cotton plants that Michael found particularly interesting. We were sad to see them go...we had all gotten along so well together, and that made the trip so much fun for all of us.

After they left us, we saw many more giraffes and two bull elephants, the older one with very long, beautiful tusks.

We also saw the Windmill Lion Pride, which had just wandered into Mala Mala from Djuma and had their eye on a small herd of wildebeest across the road and on the other side of a field. The pride was composed mostly of females, including an experienced older lioness that Lucky said was the leader, but there were also several young males. We watched them for a while, but they seemed quite comfortable where they were and in no hurry to try for a meal.

We finally headed back to give us time to have breakfast and finish packing. At 11:30 am, Lucky brought us back to the Mala Mala airstrip, where we boarded a somewhat larger plane (about 40 passengers) for the flight to Jo'burg.  After we had boarded the plane, Susan and I looked out the window, and decided that we felt very reassured, seeing that the Fire Department was present and ready for any and all emergencies:

At the airport, we had some time to wait for our flight back to the States, so we had a late lunch, then Susan shopped, Doug found the smoking lounge, and I played on the internet, mostly at Pete's Pond. Then we boarded our plane for the 16-hour flight (plus a one-hour refueling stop at Dakkar). When we arrived at JFK, Susan managed to get us standby on an earlier flight to Boston, which got us home two hours earlier than expected. And it was good to be home.

But Africa got under our skin. We loved it. And we miss Mashatu. And we are already talking about going back.

21 Sept 09

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