Tuesday, October 16, 2018

African Safari Part 3

A bird of prey eating it's lunch
A male lion
I went on the Safari hoping to see as much as I could, but didn't have a list of what would make the safari a success.  Everyone who goes on a safari wants to see the "Big 5" - lion, buffalo, leopard, rhino and elephant, and I sure hoped I would too, but really I just wanted to see it.  I was hoping to see at least 1 lion - but we saw over 30.  One day, I asked Lawrence what animals we could expect to see that day and he said - we will see what we see.   Which was true, we weren't at a zoo - he had no control over what we would see and neither did we.  We saw the ones who were near our vehicle each day and enjoyed them, thankful for all that we saw.   In all, Pam and I identified over 30 different species of animals and over 55 different species of birds that we saw in just 6 days.  


Lion showing it's teeth
Our vehicle with top up
Baby elephant showing it's tusks














Blue Monkey















Some of the highlights included seeing lions eating a buffalo they had recently killed, seeing cheetahs from a distance and watching them work their way closer and closer to us until they were just outside the vehicle, finding a leopard hiding in a tree, and all the elephants.  I loved the variety that we saw each day and even though we had already seen a number of zebra or wildebeests or elephants to see them do something different each day or see them in a different way was exciting.

Some have asked if I would go again - yep, in a heartbeat.  Sure I saw "everything" I wanted to see, but you never know what else you might see.  Maybe next time I would get to see the lion taking down the buffalo, not just eating them, or maybe I would see the migration of the zebra and the wildebeests and the crocodiles hunting them, or a baby giraffe.  God's creation is amazing, and I am thankful to have had the chance to see some of it, and until next time I will try and enjoy the beauty of His creation in PNG, today.


Hildebrandt's Starlings
Von Der Decken's Hornbill