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GAME DRIVE #7 PICTURE LINK
On this afternoon game drive, it was just Jeff and I. It was also our last one with Jackson as he was leaving to go home the next
day to see his family for two weeks. He hadn't seen them in a couple of months.
He asked what we wanted to do, and we suggested going out to the Miti Mbili Plains where we had been on Game Drive #4.
The wildlife was awesome over
there. We also told him we wanted to stay
out a little longer. It's okay as long as you're out of the park by 7:00pm, otherwise he would get in a lot of trouble by the game warden.
So off we went. He had to drive very fast to make it way out to where we had been. Jeff and I had death grips on the jeep trying to hold
on! I had him stop so I could try to get pictures of the elusive baboons, but again the pictures are from far way. (Don't worry, I'll
get them in Uganda!)
He drove for two hours like a mad man, but we didn't see a darn thing besides antelope! We drove through the Miti Mbili Plains and back
into the park along Rhino Ridge before he got a call on the CB about a pride of lions that had been spotted. We turned around and about 30 minutes
into the drive back, we saw the jeeps that had surrounded a pride.
We made our way over there, and they had found two lion brothers. One was completely zonked
out and never even lifted his head the whole time we were watching him. The other was crouched down resting. He looked older and had such a
spectacular color to his coat. (The second picture of him is one of my favorites.)
Not much else was going on, so we had to head back to camp as it was getting late. All of a sudden, Jackson veers off and takes
a different road as he saw something. It was a lioness on the prowl. Since it was so late in the afternoon, she was going off to hunt.
We followed along the side of her as she walked. She stopped after awhile and looked at us. It was like she was saying, "Do you mine?
I would like to walk in peace!"
I set up this cool picture of Jeff in
the jeep with the lion in the background. Just as I took the picture, she starts to defecate! I took a couple of pictures of before
and after she was done, so I would have one good picture and one blackmail picture! I laughed so hard my sides hurt!
Well if there are lions, there are hyenas not far behind. Sure enough, two hyenas were following this lioness. If you don't believe
me that they are ugly animals, look at these pictures closely. They have scowls on their faces and sloped hindquarters that make them
walk funny. To top everything off, one of the hyenas comes up to where the lion dung was and ate it. After seeing that, I was WAY ready to go!
Since we were out so long, I had told Jackson that I needed to tinkle when the opportunity came up. So we went way off the road and
found a huge acacia tree to stop at. Jeff gets out first and looks at the tree we were to walk to, and he sees a buffalo. He gets back
in the
jeep and tells Jackson he doesn't think this is a good spot. He asks why and Jeff points out the buffalo. Jackson hadn't seen it, and he
was glad Jeff said something since buffalo have terrible eyesight and it will charge you if it can't figure out what you are! Close call!
After finding a more appropriate place to tinkle (I "marked my territory" in Kenya!),
we started the rest of the long journey back to our camp. About twenty minutes into it, it
starts to rain, then it begins pour. Jackson said it just stopped raining like this three weeks ago, but
there would be an occasional rain storm in June. He zipped up the panel above the windshield, gave us ponchos to wear, and we scooted into
the middle of the seat together. But we still got soaked
and full of mud. We were so cold!
The roads
turned to mud rivers, and it became very difficult to drive. It wasn't much fun and kind of scary. That alone confirmed to me that
I would never come to Africa during the rainy season! It poured throughout most of the evening.
Have fun looking at the pictures from Game Drive #7 and Jeff's "crappy" picture!
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Copyright © 2002, Dawn M. Dalton.
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