It’s hard to describe how awesome our safari was - we packed four drives into one 3-day weekend and saw all of the “Big Five” (elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, lion, and buffalo), plus many more! Those animals are called the Big Five because they were the hardest animals to kill.

Breakfast in the bush with the savannah in the background. This was our second day in the Mara.

I love this picture, the elephants were so aware of us being right next to them and they just didn’t care! Unless the babies were around, then the moms started getting a little agitated. We had to back up at one point because one elephant was giving us the evil eye.

We couldn’t get very close to these rhinos because they are very shy, but they were pretty cool. A water buffalo tried to join them at one point, but the rhinos would have none of it! They stared him down and he kind of moped away.

I can’t believe how many lions we saw! They were everywhere! I have some great video of them, which I’ll post when I get back.

Yes, I did yell “tatonka!” when I saw the buffalos - who could resist???

Unfortunately, the computer in the hotel has decided to stop cooperating and won’t let me upload the picture of the leopard. It too is far away because leopards are also very shy, but I got some pretty good pictures of it up in a tree.

The camp we stayed at was a “luxury tented camp” called Kichwa Tembo which means Elephant Head. The “tents” were amazing - we had stone floors and a bathroom complete with toilet and shower (with hot water!). It really was “rich man’s camping.” Lucky for us, the tourism business is so slow we got a great deal for the weekend. The camp had a turndown service at night and they put hot water bottles in the beds to warm them up. The wake up call in the morning was a woman from housekeeping who would bring a tray of coffee, milk, sugar, and biscuits to the tent and softly call “good morning” from outside the tent as she left the tray right outside. There was a pool and we could look out onto the savannah as we lounged. I tell you, if camping was always like that, I would do more camping!

I probably won’t post more safari pictures until I get back - but that is getting closer and closer - I can’t believe I only have two and a half weeks left! Hope you enjoy this sample of African wildlife!

Note from Dave: did my best to “enhance” the photos from Meg, will probably fix them up more once she gets home.  Note to other photographers, the digital zoom produces a ton of noise (graininess).  Get closer to your subject if you can, instead of using the digital zoom.  I’m glad Meg took the shot of the lion using the digital zoom

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