God is amazing! Today could not have been anymore fulfilling.
We decided as a group(actually Brooke) to get up at 5am, which was not that bad except for the fact that I literally did not get any sleep. I got in bed around 1:30 and just as I was falling asleep I heard some thing rustle in the grass. This being the first night sleeping sort of in the wild, I freaked out. I was not scared about the animals per say. I was mainly scared about someone coming into my tent and stealing my stuff. The noise of movement in the grass, grass being eaten and footsteps on my porch kept me up for 2 hours. Anyway, that was not the amazing part of the day.
The reason for getting up so early was the have a better chance finding Lions and other animals that comes out in the morning. Elisa was our driver again and put extra Fanta in the cooler today. He knows me to well. We ended up riding around the park really fast without stopping so that we could spot a Lion. It just so happens that we drove up on five female lions sleeping under an upside down tree. We could not have gotten a better spot (right in front) just 15 feet away from us. Behind us was the older male Lion, but he was behind a lot of bushes. I learned that Lions feed one day and rest two days. Fortunately we found them on their rest day. My next goal is to see a kill and a Hippo! We ended up taking pictures of the lion for an hour and I got 200 pictures out of it. This was just the morning.
The day just got better and better. We spotted a Leopard a little later and followed it until it ran up a tree. Even with my 500mm lens I could not seem to get a close picture of the Leopard. They blend in very well. However, I did get a great picture of the Leopard right before he jumped up in the tree. Nicole had the quote of the day. We egged on Elisa to go forward more so that we could see the leopard, but when he pushed the accelerator the car got stuck. Nicole jokingly said, “Be careful what you wish for”. The Leopard was eyeing us up and down as lunch. Seeing the Lions and the Leopard was pretty much the only new animal we saw today. After the Safari we stopped at two tribe market stores. A certain tribe ran the first market where the women made everything by hand. They were all dressed in blankets and robes and had beaded necklaces on and six earrings in their ears. Some had wholes in their ears the size of a half dollar. Everyone bought something. I bought two bowls and a Christmas ornament. I learned fast that making deals with the women was important because they would usually go down in price a little. At the end of both markets the women sang to us and danced. I was so amazing to get a taste of their culture. It was truly a blessing that we saw them because it helped show me that even with just a little bit in life you can be happy and dance and celebrate. The rest of the day was break time before dinner.
Update – Not much sunburn, no mosquito bites, bruises all over my body from hitting the car on every bump in the road. Getting along with everyone….. So far!
0 comments:
Post a Comment