Morning Game Drive

We woke up and went to get coffee and breakfast feeling a bit unsure of just what the travel arrangements would be. Upon our arrival at the dining area we happily met up with our new driver, Lucky, and  our friends from Mashatu. We left camp expecting an enjoyable game drive and hoped to see some wildlife too!

Lucky did not disappoint!

Things started off much like they had at Mashatu: Lucky expected us to be primarily interested in seeing the Big 5. The five of us now had experience in expressing to guides how little we were concerned with that however, so a few hours into the drive he was finding animals and then we would hang out for a little while watching them, regardless of what they were, really. As long as they were doing something and we could see them we pretty much hung out for a while each time we found another creature.

Some of the highlights:
Ground Hornbills- much larger than the Hornbills we saw elsewhere, and apparently pretty rare. They are another bird that seems to prefer walking to flying.







The hornbills we saw so often at Mashatu were also at Mala Mala-

Another shot of an Eagle.

I managed to get some shots of what I am told are Herons, though I am not sure which heron...
I need to get a book!



Good shots of birds in flight really do seem to be a challenge I enjoy and I think I got a couple of good ones of these two. Out of a hundred or so I took!
Flying over a stork (I think!)

These birds have funny little crests so I should eventually be able to find out what they are and post the name....

This is a Hamerkop.

We saw a lot of giraffe on the 21st-

Kingfishers fly fast and have a funny hover/DROP like a rock fishing style which is amazing to watch.

Here I tried to capture it photographically:

I wasn't able to catch him in mid-dive though.

The airfield was quite close and we learned that it often is a good place for game viewing.
So good that when an aircraft is due somebody has to drive the runway to ensure that the wildlife isn't hanging out on the landing strip!
This shot is of the flags flying at the field:

I really like these landscape shots for some reason.

Another camp quite close to Mala Mala

Lucky found us this young female leopard napping in a tree.

We woke her up, of course.

She wasn't happy with us staring at her so she left her napping spot...

She looked back up at her perch where she had left her dinner-

And then she continued to walk away-

But not far!

Her mother was nearby, and Lucky told us that the young leopard was old enough to be on her own but still staying with her mother- who probably caught the food they were eating.

 

You can see both of them in the next shots:

 

The night before we had spent some time herding a well known pride of lions named the Styx Pride, and today Lucky found them again- having breakfast!

We were able to watch them for a while before any other trucks showed up.

There are a lot more pictures of them in the gallery as well.

Wildebeest were around and I think we saw more together at once on the 21st than at any other time-

We saw zebra many times and they are actually hard to get bad pictures of, really. Must be the stripes that does it...

Getting good pictures of young zebra is a bit harder; the adults tend to get between their young and any NON-zebra animal, including tourists with cameras!
These were pretty obliging though:

I took a picture early in the drive because I thought there was something odd about a ranger who was driving around with these two books in his truck:

I learned that the main purpose was so WE could read the entries on the animals, of course!

After riding around with Lucky for just one morning our truck was once again a happy place to be.
We had gotten lucky at Mala Mala because we got Lucky.