Africa 2006 Elephant Plains Notes: Wayne was our driver and Prince was our tracker. They worked together to make sure that we didn't miss any animal sightings. Wayne is going to get married soon and is planning a honeymoon in Egypt — be sure and ask him about his travel plans when you see him. What we saw:
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The fastest way to get anywhere in South Africa is to take a plane - or two. Left, Scott prepares for take off. I think he's ready to go on safari. Our first flight is from Johannesburg to Nelspruit. Below you can see the city soon is left behind for rolling hills and wide open spaces of nature (and adventure?). |
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Each plane gets smaller and smaller. From Nelspruit we catch a 9-seater plane that will take us to the airstrip at Elephant Plains. We really would like to move past all this plane riding and see some animals. I was hoping to see some elephants from the air. The pilot thought that was funny (is that a bad sign? are the elephants away this week - what?). |
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This was the official greeter at the entrance to Elephant Plains. |
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There was plenty of wildlife surrounding the camp. To the left is the view from most of the rooms. Animals wandered in and out of this area all day. We saw elephant, buffalo, impala and baboons crossing the open field. |
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Our first safari started late afternoon. One of the first things we saw was this little guy. He is a steenbok and is in the dwarf antelope family. |
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| Yellow-billed hornbill, locally known as the flying banana. | Grey lorrie |
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| On the left is a zebra. On the right is a leopard, OK it is a leopard behind a bunch of bushes pretty far away, but it is our first leopard sighting and it might be the only shot we get. | |
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| We drove into this grove of trees and were soon surrounded by cape buffalo. You can see in the shot on the right how close the animals come to the Landrover. It is pretty exciting to be sitting out in the open and getting such a good view of things. | |
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Prince used a spotlight to find animals in the dark. The animals' eyes show up as different colors so he could tell pretty quickly what he had found. We avoided shining the light on prey animals since they could be blinded by the light for up to 15 minutes (enough time to become someone else's bedtime snack). Here he has found a flapnecked chameleon. We were totally impressed that Prince even saw this guy. You can't tell from the photo, but he is very small and very high up in a tree over our heads. |
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