Wednesday August 27th

Sorry for being away, but the lions left me speechless.

Have a sunrise:

Tuesday 26th - 6am-ish

and a tortoise:

One of the little five

And a sunset:

 The burning bush

We actually were home from the evening drive by 18:30 as the smoke was so bad it was making me ill and it was decided that no-one wanted more smoke. 

Yesterday was a really early start. Left at 04:30 to see the dogs. It's just over an hour's drive on appalling tracks for the most part. I have taken to describing it as an African massage. The wind on the back of the truck is very lazy and Sina and I most closely resembled a couple of small icebergs by 05:40 when we arrived. Hot tea was about to happen when the dog pack appeared on the path. I do have video, but it needs some serious editing before I can display it to a wider public. No stills: too busy actually watching the dogs, who tried and failed to hunt down a wildebeest. They left and killed elsewhere before coming back about an hour later.

One of the dogs came right up to the back of the truck - I swear he would have jumped on had the tailgate been down - to check us out on each occasion. No aggression, simple curiosity. We followed them for a bit as they were keeping close to the track and one peeled off to chase an impala. One of the older dogs followed him(?) and took him back to the pack. Dogs are not lone hunters. 

We went off and did some bird watching, well, I did, before fleeing from a hippo. This turned out to be completely unnecessary as the hippo had no intention of coming out of the water, but provided valuable points for last night's drinking game. As referee and chief rule maker I did not participate in said game, but everyone is rather hung over today.