Kruger Day 4...

Another glorious day in the bush. While I don't have photos of everything, this was probably the most spectacular day we had, seeing the big 5 twice over in one day. Gruesome, I know, but the vertebra picture above is another of my holiday favourites. Photos speak for themselves...

We came across this magnificent pair of lions. Generally, lions are territorial, but these two weren't bothered by a second mating pair within a 100m of them... They just can't keep their eyes open...He's gone. Lights out... This is the male from the second pair. The female is lying on the ground in the background. Did you know that lions can mate up to 50 times a day?? They'd just finished the deed here. And no, I don't have any pictures, they were very discreet...

Since there are only something like 200 cheetah in the whole of the Kruger National Park (and it's a pretty big place), we'd been told that there was virtually no chance of us seeing cheetah whilst in the park. Our luck was up though. We stopped at a water hole and were watching an elephant making his way to the reservoir, when someone spotted a cheetah lying in the shade of the reservoir. The cheetah didn't hear the elephant approaching and were taken totally by surprise by his loud slurping. They watched him from a distance for a while, keeping a close eye on him and eventually opted to slink off into the bushes. This picture isn't great, they were really far off, but you can still see them. There were 4 in total... This is another very curious, cheeky inhabitant. It's a ground hornbill...This series of photos are my favourite elephant snaps. It was such a huge herd...We'd spent most of the day travelling from Shingwedzi to Olifants (Elephants). This was definitely my favourite camp and the view we had from our bungalow was spectacular. Those are my blurred toes on the balcony...

We could hear the hippos grunting and bats squeaking all night. It was incredible...

Mom, Jake & Kathy, relaxing with drinks after our long journey...

We'd been there a little while already, when one of our neighbours came and asked if we'd spotted the lions yet. These pictures also aren't spectacular, but we had lions! To give you an idea, if you look at the picture above of Jake on his own, there are some trees to his left, the 4 lions were just past there. That's far. That's very, very far...The day ended off with another spectacular sunset...

5 Days to go. Bored yet??