Last full day in the bush

 Tuesday, September 10

We started the day with a two hour bush walk led by a park ranger.  Bush walking is a very different way to see the savanna. On a bush walk you get to experience thing like how large an elephant footprint is, or how tall a giraffe is to munch on acacia trees. We saw the scat of all sizes from dikdik (about the size of a dry black bean) to zebra (the size of a domino) to elephant (think rough Belgian blocks). The scat reflects not only the size of the animal but their diet and how efficient their digestion is. Elephants only digest about 25% of what they eat, so there is a lot left for other creatures to scavenge from the scat.  We had to divert our path twice to avoid annoying Cape buffalo. Most animals and even birds have learned to be calm around the tourist vehicles, but they flee from a human on foot. We got to see a lot of running and flying during our walk— and then near the end, some giraffe, warthogs and zebra decided we weren’t so bad after all.

The drive from camp to the ranger station took about 15 bumpy minutes, but the trip back took longer because we saw several interesting things, including a rare Lesser Kudu (a medium sized antelope with stripes and strong facial markings, which is very skittish and thus hard to photograph).  We returned to came about 10 am, which meant we started our game drive later than usual, going out much closer to the heat of the day.  We drove along the river (pretty narrow this deep into the dry season) and returned along the marsh from yesterday. Most creatures are less active mid day, although we did finally track down a parrot that had been eluding us. We got to see a small leopard tortoise crossing the road. We also saw the usual suspects: elephants, zebra, buffalo (all in huge herds), warthogs, impala and dikdik. 

We saw several herds near camp as we drove back at sunset, which raises the question of what we will hear overnight from our tent. For our final African dinner we sat under the stars, surrounded by the bush. Yet again the staff checked the surrounding grasses with strong flashlights throughout the meal. 

Pictured: (small) leopard tortoise, walking companions,  eastern violet-backed sunbird,  lesser kudu, female African orange-bellied parrot