Jun 12/13 More from Bateleur Camp

Auntie em here again. Things continue to be spectacular around here. When I last left off, we were about to go on our 4 pm game drive. A hilight of that was me (yes ME!!!) spotting 4 lion cubs! OK, so I thought it was a mother and two cubs, but still, I saw them. We watched them for quite a while. Other vehicles joined us....Lions area big deal around here! Whenever one vehicle happens to come upon another vehicle that is stopped, they always slow down to see what it's occupants are looking at....and if it is lions, then for sure they will stop too. The cubs had been left alone while the females had gone off to hunt ( the males have no responsibilities at all), but the mothers had not returned quickly enough so the cubs came out to look for her. We waited about half an hour...the mothers didn't show...we had to leave to go off for "sundowners"... That's when your ranger miraculously pulls out a table and table cloth from the jeep, and pours you a glass of wine, or a beer, or a pop. Right at sundown! Anyways, wilson told us the mothers would have to find their cubs, since the cubs had wandered quite a ways off....they find them by calling. From our tents at night, we heard the lions calling all night. Hope they found them!

Dinner was fun last night. The tables were all set up on the lawn, lanterns all over the place and charcoal heaters by the tables. We tried a pimms cocktail and both hated it. The chef had an outdoor station he was cooking at, and you could pick your stir fry ingredients and have it made to order while you watched. Delicious. We were very late for dinner as we had extended our game drive to include a bit of night safari...didn't see too much on that part, though.

This morning we were off on a breakfast safari...we left at 6:30 am....started things off right away with a lot of baboons, closely followed by a lot of elephants. At one point we saw 23 giraffes in one siting ... Incredible! Stopped for breakfast where Wilson once again did his impression of Mary Poppins bag....he pulled out bananas, apples, Brie cheese, Melba toast, jam, honey, granola, yogurt, then came a propane burner! He cooked crepes, sausages, and scrambled eggs...there was coffee, tea, juice. We had accidentally stopped where a lion had killed a zebra (a long time ago) so we could examine the zebra skull while Wilson got everything ready!

Once back in the jeep, we were off hunting for animals again. We have learned to watch the actions of the gazelles and bushbucks, among others.....if they suddenly stop grazing and all look in one direction, we know there may be a lion or cheetah or something else that is interesting if we go to the spot where they are looking. We came upon a bunch of bushbucks that were on the alert, so we were aiming for the spot......unfortunately we went over a little ridge and encountered a wet place that was too wet for even the jeep to cross.....or so Wilson said.....but he decided to try it anyways.....well, we got stuck.....I mean really stuck...had quite an exciting, mud splattered time while wilson tried to get us out! In the end he had to radio a buddy to come and meet us. We all crawled out via the back row while they hooked a rope between the vehicles and pulled ours out. Very exciting!

As a result we were a bit late back to camp. We sat and had a Dawa...that is the camp specialty drink....very nice...vodka, lemon, lime, honey....you could get blitzed on those really easily! Lunch was rather memorable.....first there was a giant sleeping warthog in the middle of the table grouping.....got a few pictures with him, as near as we dared to go. Then just after our soup course a monkey came out of nowhere and landed on our table....was on one side of Emily and reached over her plate to try and grab her bread! A little startling to say the least!

After that we decided we needed to relax a bit in our amazing rooms before the 4pm safari.....it is a busy schedule here!....so we cancelled our planned walk to the Masai village. Emily is taking a short nap, and I'm writing this! Never a dull moment here!