The End of the Bateleur Camp

Emily here...

What more can we say about the Bateleur Camp? Lots! Every day is different, and you never know what the animals or staff will surprise you with next.

On our afternoon game drive we were joined by an American man and South African woman. We had seen them eating together at lunch and through eavesdropping deduced that they didn't know each other well. My theory was that he had met her and randomly offered to pay for the trip if she would go with him...like an extended blind date. The back-up and correct theory was that they had met on the plane over and decided to eat together rather than alone. Anyways they were both very nice but he was a very amateur photographer who didn't know how to work his very expensive camera....so we had to listen to his stream of consciousness as he was figuring it out. A real chatterbox.

Anyways on the afternoon game drive we immediately saw three giraffes super up close, sitting down. Like 30 feet away. It was insane. One stood up and started drooling and licking it's lips. They have very very long tongues (fun fact!). It was super cool. Then we drove a little ways down the road and saw a huge herd of elephants on both sides of the car, several baby ones too. Two of them sort of started to fight and I got a little nervous that their fighting would take them on top of our car. And when Wilson tried to start the jeep it didn't work the first few times and I got quite worried! But all was well. Auntie Em wants me to add that one elephant came running out of the woods with his "shlong" hanging out, almost touching the ground, looking for a female to mate with. Unfortunately for him and for us he couldn't find one that was ready. That would have been an INSANE sight! After that we saw hundreds of zebras which was cool, and then went hunting for the very elusive leopard, the only one of the big five we hadn't seen (in less than two days!). After looking under and in every tree we couldn't find it, but Wilson did take us somewhere cool - to the tree that was photographed in the Gobe and Mail the day we left. I posted the link in one of my first posts. We stopped under the tree and had a drink, before continuing the search for the leopard.

By this time it was dark, and Wilson needed help with a spotlight so we could look for glowing eyes. Of course I volunteered and was soon perched in the front seat, half standing and shining a super bright spotlight all around. We saw a ton of hippos that come out of the water at night to eat, but no leopard. Then, Wilson turned a corner and told me to put the red cover on the spot light. I saw some lights in the distance and assumed they were the lights of other jeeps looking at the leopard. Then he said to turn off the light, and we pulled into a little clearing and they had set up a bush dinner! Tons or lanterns in the trees, candles, a bonfire, linen on the tables, crystal...this time we actually held hands (haha).

Before dinner about 25 Masi warriors came and did some traditional singing and dancing...of course auntie em refused to dance with them, so I had to take one for the team. I didn't want to hurt his feelings since we had already cancelled our bush walk with him...they even had outhouses set up with toilet paper on twig holders. The food of course was fantastic.

We were headed home (exhausted, what kind of a vacation is this?!?) and I was up front spotting, when Wilson got a call on his radio that the had found the leopard!! We had to turn around and rush to the spot. It was all curled up under a bush. We could see it, but barely. No wonder it had been so hard to find! So we have now seen all of the Big Five!!

After a short sleep we were back up at 5:45am for our last Bateleur game drive. This morning the highlight was two female lions and a cub eating a Topi they had killed (we didn't see the kill). But even cooler were the hyenas who had stolen a big piece of it and were gnawing away. Saw lots of ribs and blood. Auntie Em filmed a lot of it, so I guess it didn't bother her. It was very cool. We were only 10 feet away from them!!!

And so ended our lovely 3.5 days at Bateleur. Next stop: Arusha, Tanzania!!!