Farewell Karongwe; Monkey Tales

(We have a short window of wi-if and are catching up on some of our stories.)

For our last day at camp, we got in one more early morning game drive. We hoped to find another leopard, but it didn’t want to be found. Still, we had several good animal and bird sightings: giraffes, waterbuck, a small antelope called the Common Duiker, owls, hornbill and more. Heading back to camp for breakfast-time, we had an elephant roadblock. It gave us an excellent opportunity to observe their tree-grazing behavior—stripping off the bark of small branches to get to the softer, moist layer beneath (it is the dry season after all).

After breakfast, we had time for a quick visit to the hippo pond. They were sunbathing again, but no ellies driving them away this time. A very large crocodile made his way across the pond, and a smaller bird was dive-bombing the eagle, who was probably too close to its nest. Along the way, we found lots of Vervet monkeys hanging around the camp.

Soon it was time to fly back to Johannesburg in preparation for our departure for Zimbabwe tomorrow. Along the drive to the airport, baboons were hanging out eating oranges left behind from the recently harvested groves that lined the road.

A story from yesterday: while we were out on our afternoon game drive, the troop of baboons living near the camp ripped the canvas of six of the 24 tents — including ours. They got inside, opened the mini-fridge, which was behind a cabinet door, but since we didn’t have anything in it they left. But first they investigated our Yahtzee game box. It needed a lot of taping to put back together, but all the pieces were there, and no dice were lost.Read more