Hyenas, Hippos & Elephants

Despite being up early this morning nobody was in a particular hurry to get going. Last night seemed pretty quiet in camp but on checking the camera traps it was revealed that a hippo and a hyena passed through. Fortunately I think we were all so tired that we just slept through it.
At 8am we left camp and went on our final game drive here. Rather than take the wet boggy road we took yesterday we passed by the South Gate entrance and the roads were much better. Apart from the odd impala, and lots of different birds we didn’t actually see much this morning and I think it was probably all the rain we had last night.
At lunch time after a lot of turning around and trying to avoid deep water we arrived at the Dumbo Hippo pools where there were lots of Hippos talking to each other and lots of waterfowl. We spent about 2 hours there and had a bite to eat and took lots of photos.
Leaving the hippos in the early afternoon we came across a tower of giraffes. They are such gentle and inquisitive creatures, that while we watched them they moved closer to a nearer tree so they could watch us whilst eating.
And then the rain broke and we headed back to camp only to find that we had been raided by monkeys. Mine and Ellies storage box had, had the lid removed and everything thrown across camp. Pieter and Hilda’s tent had actually been completely unzipped and they had been in and searched the place, but Becky came worst off as they broke through the zipper on her tent and then filled it with sand.
It was annoying but funny.
We strung a tarpaulin between 2 trees and Caren the car and while the rain was heavy we all sat around the table with beers and wine.
After dinner at 6:30pm, when it was pitch black we heard lots of rustling in the bushes behind our tents and as we shone the torch through a huge tusked elephant came walking through the camp about 19 meters away from us, it was amazing but scary all at the same time.
At 8:30pm, like the hardcore people we are we all headed for our tents. The camera traps are set, hippos and elephants are directly behind our tents and it’s now a waiting game to see if any predators come to camp.Read more