Tender Moment

One of my targets on this trip was the vervet monkeys that are so common here.  And while the light conditions for this were rather poor (we were losing the light fast), I loved this image of a female and her baby having a quick cuddle before the youngster scampered off.  

The rest of our night in the hide last night was uneventful but when the sun started to come up, we had some fun birds including Cape Starlings which are a stunning blue and a group of Helmeted Guineafowl with their colorful heads.  When we got back to the lodge around 9, we tucked into breakfast and then settled for a quick nap (90 minutes) in order to be up for a workshop that our guide was doing at noon.  Lunch at 1 and then we headed out for our afternoon game drive at 2:30.

The game drives here have been just fabulous and this one didn't disappoint.  We got some wonderful shots of rhinos in a field of small flowers, a huge herd of Cape Buffalo who suddenly broke out into a sexual frenzy with multiple males trying to mount disinterested females.  Warthogs, impala and wildebeest were also on view.  We ended up in a lagoon where a pod of hippos live and got there just in time to see them taking in oxygen by yawning.  They do this before leaving the water in the evening to restore energy so they can graze all night.  Check out Hillyblips for a fab shot of the yawning hippo.  And as were were leaving the hippos we came across the troop of monkeys returning to their tree for the evening.  Not sure we could possibly have squeezed more out of one day.

Last night at dinner, the started was springbok carpaccio and it was delicious.  I grew up eating game meat so I love trying things like this.

Thanks for coming along!

xo
Debbi