Day 14: Thursday 4th December

snack time

Safari in the rain

Scorpian

Grysbok Leopard tortise

Dung beetle rolling dung

Hyena and the elephant carcus

We awoke again at 5am – boy does it feel early. Just as we where setting off on our drive it began to rain, we where given poncho’s to put on but got soaked anyway. Josh and I had rain on our glasses, made it quite difficult to see! Most of the animals where sheltering from the rain. We saw a hyena eating a dead elephant, it had been dead for a number of days (of natural causes) and the other animals had already eaten most of it, it was the Hyena and the vultures finishing it off. We saw a leopard tortoise and got a good picture of a steenbok and watch the mother and baby leopard walking for a while. We returned back early at 8am due to being totally soaked an enjoyed a nice shower before breakfast. Despite the rain it is still 26-29 degrees and the humidity is still high. We slept until just before lunch (2pm) and saw some baboons at the waterhole. At lunch we saw a baby brown spotted tree snake in the grass – very venomous! It had stopped raining and was nice and sunny for the drive in the afternoon. We saw a rare Sharps Grysbok and a heard of elephants got angry with us – flapping ears, snorting, throwing dust and was ready to charge – so scary! At night we saw another Jackal and because it was cooler we had the fan off whilst we slept and listened to the animal noises – hippo’s , baboons, cicadas (there are hundreds of these day and night) and a whole bunch of other noises we couldn’t even identity. Safari is amazing. We where again collected for dinner at 8apm and had few drinks then had Ostrich Carpaccio for starters, pork chop, mash, cauliflower, corn and chick pie for mains. While chocolate mousse for dessert. After dinner we was a non-poisonous scorpion and took a photo with the UV light shinning on it. This made it luminescent, as it has this coating on the outside to attract insects to it, just like how pollen attracts bees. If it stung a human it would burn but not be poisonous, it attacks it’s prey with its pincers.