I'll give you a hint. It's right in the middle of the picture.
As with the London pictures, some of these were shot from a moving vehicle, so they may be a bit blurry.
|
|
Here is the front gate to the park. |
|
|
Kris told me I had to get a picture of this type of tree (the tall one in the background). So Kris, here it is. |
|
|
Here's one to make the Orkin man go all wiggy. This is a termite mound. We saw some that were even bigger than this that had trees growing out of them. |
|
|
Nature's camouflage at work. Can you see the impala? No, not the car. The cousin of the deer. I'll give you a hint. It's right in the middle of the picture. |
|
|
This is a fairly large bird (not sure what kind) that was sitting at the very top of a tree. |
| Speaking of birds, here are a couple of secretary birds. Both are just taking off. I tried to get a shot of them on the ground, but wasn't able to get a clear shot until they were in the air. | ||
|
|
|
|
And some more birds. These are vultures. Evidently there are 3 different kinds here. Several of those that are taking off in the first two pictures landed in the top of the tree in the third picture. |
||
|
|
|
|
There were some elephants available for riding (I think for $30), although none of our group decided to do that. They had trained the middle elephant to play soccer. They would kick the ball to it, it would stop the ball with its trunk, and then kick the ball back. I tried take the second picture as it was kicking the ball, but I was a bit too late. |
||
|
|
|
|
Here are a couple cheetahs. Evidently the difference between cheetahs and leopards is in the spots. A cheetah's spots are solid black, while the leopard has white in its spots. There, you learned something about nature and you didn't need to watch the Discovery channel. :-) |
||
|
|
|
|
This is one bush you don't want to stumble into on a dark night. Or any other time for that matter. Yes, those thorns are several inches long. |
||
|
|
|
| The dark critters in the foreground are wildebeests. The light brown ones in the back are impalas. | ||
|
|
|
|
For $30 you could walk the lions. Basically it is the same thing as walking your dog. You put a leash on the lion and follow it around for a while. These are the size lions that would be walked (6-18 months old). We had originally planned on doing that, until we found out about the $30 fee (per person of course). So we had to content ourselves with some pictures. |
||
|
|
|
| These are adult lions. They were wrestling with each other while we were there. Can't say that I would have wanted to join them. | ||
|
|
|
|
Can't say that I wanted to get much closer to this guy either. The 6 inches or so between us was enough, thanks. Especially when he started sniffing in my direction. After the last picture, I looked at him and said "I'm not coming any closer." We were warned (not that any of us needed it I think) not to reach through the cage. Evidently about 15 years ago the owner of the park did just that and a lion walked away with his arm. |
|
|
|
|
|
These were some lions we could get close to though. We spent about 15 minutes in the lion cub cage, playing with these "little" guys. They're about 4 months old.
There are two reasons for the large number of pictures here. 1) This was our last stop at the park, so I filled the camera. 2) My son Michael loves kittens and puppies and such, so I took a bunch for him. Here you go Michael, enjoy. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
What trip to the game preserve would be complete with giraffes? We were due back at the main lodge for breakfast (which I must say was incredible), but the guide went looking for the giraffes for a bit instead. And we managed to find some. Kudos to those who find the giraffe in the first picture (yes, there is one in there). The last picture is of the entire herd as they moved away from us. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Here are some shots of the area. | ||
|
|
|
|
|
|