Last night as Des walked us to our villa while lions roared a few hundred yards away, he told us: I only worry about lions if they are mating, injured, or with their young. Hmmm.

It rained – mostly showers and thundershowers – so we had a cooler sunrise but also Toto stuck in my head all day (“I’ve seen the rains down in . . .”).

In the morning, we headed out to meet Des and Heather looks down and sees this looking back at us:

I snapped this under Des’s watchful eye, while momma was carrying his brothers to safety 6′ away.

Momma lion had left her cubs (3 of them) for safe keeping directly under our portch. This mom and cubs don’t have an attached male, so if the local males find the cubs, they will kill them. We got Des, he said lets come look, and by the time we got there momma had taken two away. I say her moving the cub not 6′ away, then stepped back so this tyke could run off with her.

The savannah wasn’t done with the morning cute.

Today’s agenda, a walking safari, slightly disrupted 🙂 Headed over to the airstrip to see some adult lions umm…… lyin’ around.

Morning hellos.
King of the airstrip.
What you don’t want to see if you are an impala.

Then took the long drive to where we would meet top for the walking safari. SO cool to be at ground level. Top and his .458 were a certain comfort. Zebras got very curious.

And hard life on the savannah more visceral here.

A leopard’s kill dangling above the savannah.
A termite mound warms in the morning sun.
It’s hard to be a tree in elephant country

Got back in the truck, and drove to a shady spot and had a spot of coffee.

A sausage fruit blossom on the savannah.

Then Des, almost cackling, pulls up to the scene where his colleagues have laid out the full Savannah brunch for us. Hippos, eagles, savannah, and elephant dropped in, crazy crazy crazy. And an amazing brunch to boot.

Hippos for lunch.

Headed back to camp for massage (what else)? And then out for another excursion, looking for leopards. No luck, but . . .

A teeny owl, called an owlette.
Impala and oxpecker.
Don’t know what it is called but thought it was pretty.
Who do you Kudu?
Lilac breasted rollers showing off.
A young bull, feeling his oats.
Lions waking up after a hard day of snoozing (they hunt mostly at night, unless they don’t).

Then we went to the treehouse – well after dark – where the guys had set up a full meal, bar, etc. The treehouse is all solar. It was an incredible thing to spend the night listening to lions, hippos, Baboons, . . . sleeping? Not so much. Turns out our primate brains are pretty attenuated to night noises 🙂

Savannah sunset.

Oh, btw, listening to mosquitos thwarted by mosquito netting is fun 🙂

The moon rises over the treehouse.

More on the treehouse in the next blog.