I awoke early, as usual on this trip, and Patty and I were talking in front of the tent in the semi-darkness, when I suddenly thought I heard a low growl.  Just as Patty went back in her tent, I looked up and saw lions walking past the campsite, only about a hundred feet away!  I hissed "Patty, get out here, quick!"  As we watched, a pride of twenty lions strolled right through the edge of camp!  We said we wanted lions near camp, and that's what we got!  There were four mothers and sixteen large cubs.  Freddie appeared quickly and made sure we didn't venture too close to them (we weren't planning to!), and within a couple of minutes Blassy arrived with the Landrover, and in we got to follow them!  It was incredibly cool, we watched them stroll through the sunrise landscape in a long line, and when several of the cubs became separated from the group, we even tried a little lion herding!  Blassy told us that lion cubs will nurse from any available mother, all the mothers will take care of all the young of a pride, kind of a Lion Daycare. We felt a little guilty, because Mom had not been up and dressed yet when the lions came through, and there was no time to get her, so she missed our early lion excursion.  We also saw a Serval, a member of the cat family, startled by the lions, it jumped through the grass quickly.  We hoped maybe the group would hunt, but after awhile, they lay down and went to sleep, so we went back into camp.  As we stood there, two Silvery Black Backed Jackals (as renamed by us) walked right past the tents and through the circle of the campfire near us.  We already had incredible game viewing, and we hadn't even left the camp yet!

     After breakfast, we set out for an all-day game drive.  Once again we went through countryside that was new to us.  We saw a Dark Chanting Goshawk, it didn't take us long to find a new species for the drive!  Then we saw a black giraffe!  He wasn't really black, but he was noticeably darker than normal, and he really stood out from the others, looking quite black when he was in the shadows. 

     We drove along a river area with a lot of trees, and found another leopard in a tree.  We got a super view of this one, because he was lower in the tree, and less concealed, and also because Blassy was able to maneuver the Landrover down the steep slope by the creek and right up under the tree!  The leopard was quite large, and absolutely magnificent. 

     Blassy told us about how leopards will take their kills up in a tree with them, to eat in peace without worrying about scavengers.  Patty was curious as to what it looked like to see a kill hanging in a tree, so Blassy promptly found us one to see!

     We saw a huge bird flying along the river, it was a Goliath Heron.  He was quite lovely, flying along with his enormous wingspan, seeming to move in slow motion. 

     We were searching for rhinos that day.  The rhinoceros is very rare, as they have been hunted to near extinction because certain cultures believe that their horn is an aphrodisiac.  Blassy told us that this was the area that they could be in, but it was unlikely we would see them, and he was right.  We kept scanning the area, we saw elephants that looked like rhinos from a distance, we mistook zebras for rhinos, and we saw many, many rhino rocks!  We saw rhino boulders, rhino-shaped trees, and imaginary rhinos hiding in kopjes.  But we saw no real rhinos.  The closest we came was finding rhino tracks in the dust along the road.  It was quite fun to search, however, and we were in beautiful countryside, filled with large kopjes.  We saw many imaginary animals formed from the rocks of the kopjes; giant turtles, enormous crocodiles, elephants and dogs and just about anything else you could imagine, sort of like seeing shapes in clouds! 

     We had lunch at Gong Rock.  After lunch, we saw a wonderful view of a warthog family with babies, several more lions, and two cheetahs sleeping on a termite hill.  We saw a male lion sleeping under a tree.  Patty did her lion call to get him to look up for a picture (willa willa).  

A male lion.

     We traveled across the open plain again after we left the kopjes, and I saw the distant horizon covered with small dots.  I thought, at last, we have found the wildebeest migration in full force.  But when we got closer, we discovered that the plains were dotted with tens of thousands of zebras!  They were everywhere!  I was in zebra heaven.  More zebra pictures!

     On the way home, we saw a lioness dragging away a baby zebra she had killed, which I thought was sad.  Rob forced me to take a picture of it!  We arrived back in camp about 5:30 p.m., sad because this was to be our last night in this wonderful place.

      We sat around the campfire as usual, and the stars were very bright.  Blassy and Freddie told us scary stories about lion encounters, poachers and frightened clients. Blassy had refused to tell us any of the scary stories until the last night!  He told us of one time he was sleeping in a small tent, on the ground, and it was fairly cold.  In the night, he woke up and realized that one side of him was warm, a lion had lain down to sleep right up against him, on the outside of the tent, to keep warm! 

     I brought out a little stuffed lion that I had brought with me, it had been a Christmas gift from Jineen.  I told everyone that he was a magic lion, and he was the reason we had such a charmed trip.  Blassy fell in love with the little lion, he held it and stroked it as if it were a kitten all evening.  He became very attached to it, so I gave it to him, he named it Bahati, which is Swahili for luck. 

     I also pulled out my 'slippery toy'; a small liquid filled pouch that you can't hold onto.  We passed it around the campfire, with everyone dropping it.  When our waiter, Lupi, came to call us to dinner, I handed it to him and said, "Could you hold this for a minute?"  Of course it went flying out of his hands, and he was appalled, until we all had a good laugh and he realized it was a joke. 

      That night I woke at around 3:00 a.m. and looked out the window of the tent.  The stars were incredible.  I wished I could go out and look at them, but of course I didn't dare.  Which was just as well, because a little while later, I heard a lion walk right past the tents making low growling sounds.  He roared loudly several times, we listened to him on and off until dawn.  Just before daybreak his roars were coming from the lower end of camp where the guides and camp-workers had their tents.  Patty said, “That’s what a lion sounds like after eating Blassy,” but she was wrong, because Blassy showed up for breakfast.  This was one of the most wonderful things about camping in the Serengeti, hearing the animals right in camp in the night, but we never did get to see the Southern Cross!

January 14:  Day 8

     We had breakfast in camp, sadly our last meal there.  An SBBJ (jackal) once again passed through, while we ate.  We packed up and said goodbye to our camp staff and to the Seronera Campsite, which we were very sorry to leave.  But we did not have to say goodbye to Blassy and Freddie yet, we had made arrangements for them to come with us to the Selous!  Neither had been there before, and we wanted to do something to thank them for the great time they had shown us in the Serengeti, plus we knew it would be fun for us if they came along.  Blassy was nervous about flying, as he had never been on a plane before.

     We went on a short game drive on the way to the airstrip.  It seemed that all of the animals sent representatives to say goodbye to us!  In less than two hours, we saw all of these animals:  Four lions, hippos, leopard turtles, giraffes, zebras, impalas, warthogs, baboons, Vervet monkeys, hartebeests, topis, Thomson's gazelles, Grant’s gazelles, Cape buffaloes, Dwarf Mongoose, tawny eagle, white-backed vultures, rollerbirds, superb starlings, Hildebrandt's starlings, white-bellied bustard, magpie shrikes, Northern White-crowned Shrike (our new species for the day), rednecked spurfowl, guineas, waterbucks, black-winged stilts, hyenas, blacksmith plovers, Egyptian geese, Marabou stork, reedbucks, and one lone wildebeest. 

     We were very sorry to leave the Serengeti! 

The Selous

     We flew in a very small and cramped airplane to the airstrip at Selous.  It was a small dirt landing strip with little roller-coaster type hills on it.  We crossed some very high and jagged mountains, I was surprised to look out my window and see the peaks quite close, above the plane!  Blassy was worried every time the plane hit an air pocket or made a turn.

     The Selous is a huge Game Park, also in Tanzania.  It is ten times the size of the Serengeti.  Unfortunately, only a small portion of it is a Game Reserve, much of it is used for hunting.

     We were met at the airstrip and driven to the Mbyuni Lodge.  The area near the camp was very different from the Serengeti.  It was fairly flat, with sandy soil, and lots of rivers and lakes.  There were a lot of trees of different varieties, it had more of a jungle-like feel to it. The weather was not as nice in the Selous, it was quite hot and humid.

     Mbyuni Lodge was a tented lodge, right by the shore of a large series of lakes in the river.  We were greeted by Sal, the manager, who was a friendly American.  The tents were luxurious and well furnished, although the beds were extremely hard.  There was a nice open tent for the dining area and bar. There was another tent overlooking the river, called the Library, with comfortable sofas and chairs, a table, a sideboard, and lots of books, mostly on animals and birds.  It was decorated like the Library from a fine English Estate, but without walls!  It was a wonderful place to sit in the evenings and discuss the day's activities. There was also a pool, with a canvas sunscreen over it for shade.  Due to the heat, it was a very popular place in the afternoons. 

     We were cautioned not to stray off the path between the tents and the dining area, and after dark, there was an armed guard to escort us back and forth to our tents.  This is because elephants and hippos sometimes come into camp. 

          We went out that afternoon in a boat on Lake Zelekela.  It was very hot in the camp, but once we got out on the water, it was breezy and pleasant.  We were in small motorboats, which seated four to six, with a canopy on the top for shade.

     We saw crocodiles everywhere.  They would be sunning themselves on the shore wherever there was a little strip of beach, and you would see them in the water near the shore.  They ranged from little baby ones to big ones around twelve feet.  They would leap into the water if we approached too close.  

A crocodile.

     We learned that the mother croc digs a hole to lay her eggs in, , covers it up with sand,and then watches over them for the three months it takes until they hatch, guarding against the many predators that like to dig up the nests and eat the eggs.  Once they are ready to hatch, the baby crocodiles call out and make sounds from within the eggs, and the mother will dig them up and help them get out of the egg.  She then carries them in her mouth to the water.  She looks out for them for the first month or two, until they are big enough to fend for themselves.  The sex of the baby crocs is determined by the weather during incubation, if it is very warm they will be males.  The crocodiles hang out with the hippos, because many fish are attracted to the hippo dung, and the crocs catch the fish.

     There were hundreds of hippos in the lakes and the river.  It looked like a much nicer place to be a hippo than the pools at the Serengeti!  They would put their heads up and peer at our boat as we went by.  If we strayed too close, they would threaten us and act a little aggressive.  One of them chased us a little, he came after us leaping up out of the water, and we made a hasty retreat!  Hippos are one of the most dangerous animals to man in Africa.  If you encounter one on land, they can be very fierce, especially if you come between them and the water.  In the water, they have been known to attack and overturn small boats.  They look deceptively gentle, but apparently they can be quite aggressive.

     It was bird-lover's heaven.  We saw two beautiful Fish Eagles, they look very much like our bald eagles, but with the white extending a bit further down their shoulders.  We saw a number of the large yellow-billed storks, they are mostly white on their bodies, but during mating, they turn pale pink.  We saw Pied Kingfishers, Cattle Egrets, Little Egrets, grey herons, and a lovely Giant Kingfisher.  One of my favorite birds of the whole trip was the goliath heron, we saw a number of these.  Another really interesting bird was the Open-billed Stork, they are all black, and their bills don't quite close tight.  They appear very solemn, Rob and I renamed them the Undertaker Stork.  We saw a large Ground Hornbill, and several grey hornbills flying, with their fascinating up-and-down way of gliding.  We saw many other water birds, the Common Sandpiper, Water Dikkop, Squacco Heron, Greenshank, Black-winged Stilt, and some Egyptian geese flying.  We saw some very bright yellow Golden Weaverbirds, an African Pied Wigtail, and a Palm Nut Vulture, the most attractive of any of the vultures we had seen.  We saw most of these birds each time we went boating in the Selous.

     We saw elephants twice from a distance, and a wildebeest and some impalas along the shore.  We saw Yellow Baboons.  They are much slimmer and more long-legged than the olive baboons we were used to in the Serengeti.  We thought they were much more attractive, but Blassy disagreed, and argued in favor of the Serengeti type.  He said they were manlier! 

     As we were going along in the boat, suddenly a fish jumped out of the water and into our boat!  We figured we must be pretty fine fishermen!  It was a Tilapia, and we threw it back.  

     The food was quite good at Mbyuni, maybe the best we had eaten in Africa.  There was a campfire, but it was too hot to sit around it!  We took a cold shower and went to bed. There were always Gecko Lizards on the outside of the tents, eating the bugs, but there were plenty left for us, they came through the mosquito netting if we tried to read.  In the night, we could hear the noise of the hippos in the river.  They sounded as if they were laughing!

January 15: Day 9

     When we got our wake-up call in the morning, they brought us tea or coffee and gingerbread elephants. I sat on the verandah of the tent in the morning writing in my journal, it was very peaceful.

     After breakfast, Patty, Mom and I went for a game drive.  Rob and Blassy went for the walking tour instead.  We didn't start as early in the Selous, as the game drives were shorter, and Sal wasn't too keen on us going out at dawn like we were accustomed to in the Serengeti.  It was quite a different kind of system, instead of having one guide, who got to know us, we were assigned a guide for each boat trip or game drive, often getting someone different.  We did not like this system nearly as much, as we did not get to know our guides very well, and they didn't get as much of a chance to learn what we liked to do and see.  The vehicles we rode in were different too.  They were jeep-type trucks with open benches in back, with a canvas roof for shade.  We sat up higher, which was good for viewing, and these vehicles were cooler, but the driver/guide was in the cab of the truck, so it was more difficult to talk with him and ask him questions.  Our guide the first morning was named Kimaro.  He was knowledgeable, and we came to like him very much, as we had him several times throughout the stay. 

     The area was very lush, with a lot of trees.  There were many palm trees around the water.  We went along the edge of the lake, and you could see high water marks on the trees, about 8 to 10 feet above the ground where the lake had flooded during the El Nino rains a few years earlier.  We learned later that the whole camp had been underwater, and that they were actually in the process of moving Camp Mbyuni to higher ground in case of future flooding.  The river had been just a small stream before, but during the rains, it changed course, and greatly enlarged the lakes that are there now.  Many of the trees near the edge of the water were dead from the flooding, and there were many huge Borassus palms actually growing in the water near the edge of the lake, but they were dying too.    

     We saw crocodiles and hippos in the water, and many of the water birds we had seen from the boat the day before along the shore.

    We saw many impalas among the trees, they seemed more numerous here. There were plenty of giraffes around, sometimes in large groups of twenty or more, which was something we had not encountered in the Serengeti.  We would often see birds sitting on the necks or backs of the giraffes, looking for ticks and bugs.  We saw a nice group of eight elephants, with several babies.  Later we saw another group of fifteen.  We learned that elephants live up to 60 or 70 years.  They mature at about 17 years, at which time the males are pushed out of the herd.  Gestation takes about two years. 

     We saw a group of five lions.  There were two males and three females, one of them was very pregnant.  We watched the lionesses drink from a pool by the lake.  The males were much darker than the ones in the Serengeti, and had very thin coats and almost no manes.  Kimaro told us that this was because of the heat and the denser underbrush.  The females have faint spots on their bellies, and the cubs are more spotted than the ones in the Serengeti.

     One of my favorite things in Selous was the Baobab trees.  They have huge trunks, with relatively small branches in relation to their enormous girth.  We went through a whole grove of them, they were absolutely stunning.  We saw two Saddle-billed Storks, they were magnificent when they flew.  We saw some Cape buffaloes, Patty did her Cape buffalo call (willa willa), and they looked up for the photo.  We got a good look at several Southern Wildebeests.  They are much prettier than the ones we saw in the Serengeti, they are fatter, have more prominent striping, and black beards instead of white.  They tend to travel in much smaller groups, and they acted so much friskier than the white-bearded gnus of the Serengeti, with much bucking and kicking and running around, rather than just plodding along with a drooping head.

Baobab tree

     We saw a martial eagle, and a beautiful blue bird called a Blue-eared Glossy Starling.  We saw Common Bee-eaters and White-browed Sparrow Weavers.  We saw some black-faced vervet monkeys and several dwarf mongooses.  On the way back to camp we passed a large Baobab with a big hole in it, Kimaro told us it was a honeybee hive.  We called it the Honey Tree.

      Rob and Blassy enjoyed their walk, they said that it concentrated on all of the small things that you miss on a game drive.  Rob thought the highlight was seeing a Buffalo Spider (also known as the Kite Spider), it makes a web shaped like a kite.

     Patty and I saw a really cool Millipede on the path in camp.  It looked like it was moving on tracks or conveyer belts like a bulldozer.  Perhaps that is why bulldozers are called Caterpillars!  Blassy pointed out a beautiful bird in camp, a Paradise Flycatcher, with a tail about two feet long. 

     We sent to the pool after lunch, it was too hot in camp to spend the middle of the day anywhere else.  Rob taught Blassy to swim. 

      In the afternoon, we went out in the boat again.  We went down the Rufiji River to Lake Siwandu.  It was really nice out on the river.  In addition to many of the birds and animals we had already seen, we saw a beautiful Scarlet Sunbird, a Green-backed Heron, a Red-throated Bee-eater and a White-fronted Bee-eater.  We saw rows of holes in the mud of the shore banks, they were the homes of the bee-eaters.  The most beautiful bird we saw that day was the Malachite Kingfisher, it was Blassy's favorite.  It was very small and very colorful, fabulous.

     We saw some of the largest crocs we had seen, around four meters.  They hold their mouths open to cool themselves.  Often a heron or egret would stand right in front of them, looking like they were about to be lunch.  We also saw a Monitor Lizard on the shore. 

     We learned to identify the Borassus palms, with their single trunks, and the Doum palm, with their symmetrical branches.  Patty got very frustrated trying to identify different types of plovers, they all look pretty much alike anyway.  We saw some good hippo interaction, I wanted to get a picture of one with its mouth open above water, but they weren't very cooperative.  We tried to get our guide to take us close enough to get them to chase us again, but he wouldn't do it. 

     We got back around sunset.  W gathered at the library before dinner for beer and safari talk.  Sal is quite good company, he told us a lot about how things run in Tanzania, and the way of life there. 

     We had a good dinner, but unfortunately, Liza was sick and could not join us, she had come down with Traveler's Disease.  Then at dinner, they served Calamari as an appetizer.  Blassy had an allergic reaction to it, and got extremely sick.  Our party was dropping like flies!  We were glad Rob is an emergency room doctor!

January 16:  Day 10

     In the morning Mom, Patty, Rob, Blassy and I went for another game drive., and Mary joined us.  Blassy had recovered from his brush with squid, so we were in high spirits.  Our guide was named Sasna.

Grace Dawson.

     We noticed that the animals in the Selous are generally much more shy than those in the Serengeti.  This is partly because they are hunted in other areas of the Selous, and partly because they are less accustomed to seeing vehicles than the animals in the Serengeti.  The impalas were the exception to this, they were actually more relaxed, everything else tended to run away quickly.  In a way, this was good, because we saw more action, and saw them in a very natural environment. 

     We saw a group of about fifteen wildebeests.  We called them beautiful, again commenting on how much more attractive they are than their Serengeti counterparts, with their nice coats and smoother outline.  Blassy agreed with us this time, but Mary said, "You all's standards must have lowered, because although they are better, they are still ugly animals!"

     We always enjoyed seeing giraffes, and we saw many.  Blassy told us that the word Giraffe is derived from the Arabic word Xiraffa, which means 'One who walks slowly'. 

     We saw a group of ten Grant's Zebras.  They are similar to the common zebra we were used to, but with stripes that were narrower.  They appeared grayer from a distance.  Patty thought they were prettier than the common zebras, more horse-like and less like ponies, but I preferred the Serengeti variety.  They were good movers, though.  They were quite shy and much more likely to run away than the common zebras, but they didn’t turn around and show us their butts like the others, maybe they were afraid to turn their backs on us.

     Patty was practicing counting to ten in Swahili, by the end of the trip, she was quite the accomplished linguist. 

     We saw Striped Ground Squirrels, and a Marsh Mongoose.  We saw more elephants, and a group of vultures, eating at a kill.  We saw some beautiful birds that morning!  The Wood Hoopoe was dark green, with a bright orange beak and a long tail.  The Carmine Bee-eater was incredible, a brilliant scarlet color.  We also saw a Senegal Plover, and another lovely martial eagle.

      At lunch, Blassy identified a bird as a Robin Chat, but when Patty questioned that, since it did not have a red breast, we looked it up in the bird book, and it turned out to be a Tropical Bou-bou.  It makes a lovely call, 'bou  bou  bou bou bou boubouboubou', a long haunting cry that we heard almost continuously from our tented lodge in the Selous.  We teased Blassy that he had made a boo-boo about a Bou-bou!  Blassy and I also saw a large monitor lizard on the path. 

     Since it was so hot, we again went to the pool in the afternoon.  Blassy was becoming quite an accomplished swimmer.  We told him he swam like a hippo (I'm not sure he took that as a compliment)!  I could still beat him in races, but only by cheating and running him into the side of the pool! 

     Blassy said that he had learned three important things by coming to Selous with us:  How to fly, how to swim, and not to eat squid!

      We went back out in the afternoon around 4:00 for another game drive, with Kimaro as our guide. We had been told that kudus lived in the area, but we had not seen one yet.  We had told Kimaro we would like to see some, we thought we would find out if our charmed trip extended to the Selous!  At first, we went quite a long way without seeing anything much.  We did see a giraffe lying down, but he leaped to his feet as soon as we appeared. 

     We came across three lionesses, probably the same ones we saw the day before.  They were sleeping in the shade, belly up, and they appeared to be pregnant.  We saw a Brown Snake Eagle, and several lovely blue Eurasian Rollerbirds.  We saw Lichenstein Hartebeests, darker and slightly different than their northern relatives.

     Then things got exciting!  I looked over in the brush and saw several pairs of large round ears sticking up, above the shrubs.  We had found Kudus!  Apparently our trip was still charmed!  They were Greater Kudus, a large antelope, brown with thin white vertical stripes on their backs.  They have a white stripe across their faces from eye to eye, and a mane down their neck and back.  The males have large twisted horns.  They were very elegant, and absolutely beautiful.  Even Blassy had not seen them before. 

     There were four kudus, two females and two youngsters.  They are very graceful, with petite faces, great round ears, and lovely expressions.  They were very shy, but we got a pretty good look at them as they stood and watched us, then ran across the road ahead of us.

     Next we stumbled across what must have been the Giraffe Nursery!  We saw a brilliant display of giraffes, with lots of babies, some that were smaller than any we had seen before.  Patty made her giraffe call (willa willa) and they looked up for a photo.   We saw the largest giraffe we had seen in Africa alongside the smallest that we had seen.  The contrast was amazing, (luckily I was able to get a photo of the two together!), the babies are smaller than you would expect.

     We then came out on a large wide open plain, reminding us of the Serengeti, only greener.  From one spot, we could see elephants, giraffes with babies, wildebeests, elands, hartebeests and lots of zebras.

     We had a long pleasant ride home in the increasing darkness.  The air smelled wonderful, and the light was beautiful.  We were all very happy and mellow.  Mom kept eating flies that insisted on flying into her mouth on the way home.  I said, "Time's sure fun when you're having flies!"  We arrived back at the lodge quite late, about 7:30.  It was dark enough that we had to use the headlights, which made the impalas jump in the air like crazy things! 

     It was a great game drive, the best we'd had so far in the Selous!

     We created a few more Limericks!

As we traveled along in our Rover,
Identifying various Plover,
It seemed to make Patty
Become quite batty
When we had to do it over and over!

 "Kimaro," we said, "Whatever you do,
you must show us the elusive Kudu."
As the hour grew late
We were reluctant to wait
So he conjured them up using voodoo. 

 We kept calling them gazelles instead of antelope,
Until Blassy had to say, "I can't a cope.
With these names that you say,
Like the SBBJ,
Maybe some day you'll get it right, I hope.”

January 17: Day 11

     We went out for a boat ride after breakfast.  We went upriver, on the Rufiji River, to Lake Manze.

     It was a good morning for lizards, we saw four good monitor lizards on the shores of the river.  They hunt for the crocodile nests and eat the eggs.  We also saw three Cape buffaloes by the river.  We saw quite a few of the lovely goliath herons, we learned that they can hunt in the deepest water of any of the herons, because of their longer legs and necks. 

     As we went along, we saw something swimming on the surface of the water.  When we drew closer, we discovered it was a half-grown weaverbird.  It had apparently fallen into the water, and was desperately trying to make it to shore.  We went up close, and rescued him out of the water, despite Blassy hitting it over the head with the oar (accidentally, he said).  We held him in our hands until he was warm and dry, later we took him to the shore.  Our guide tossed him gently up into the air, and away he flew!

     We passed another lodge, the Mbuyu Camp.  We learned that Mbuyu means Baobab, named for the great Baobab trees in the area, and Mbyuni, the name of our camp, means 'around the Baobab'.

     We saw a huge bull elephant, which our guide identified as Joseph, one of the elephants who often comes into the camp.  He was very large, and quite magnificent, with great long tusks.  He was eating the fruits from a Doum Palm tree.  He had obviously been in the river recently, as he was wet up to his hips.  We stayed and watched him for quite some time, grazing along the shore after he was done with the palm nuts.  Eventually, he crossed the small side stream that came into the river, we got to see him wade through to the other side with the water most of the way up his back.  He used his trunk to measure the depth. 

     Blassy told us that elephants are good swimmers.  Sometimes they will walk along the river bottom, with only their trunks above water.  There are two kinds of elephants in Africa.  The ones we saw are Loxodenta africana africana, so named because their ears are shaped like the continent of Africa on a map.  They are the elephants that live in forests and around trees.  The other type are smaller, they are the Loxodenta africana cyclotis, and they inhabit the savannah regions (which are flat, treeless tropical areas). 

     Our new species for the morning was the Hadada Ibis.  It was all black, and was eating on the shore.  We saw a large group of elephants grazing along the shore further upriver.  There were also more yellow baboons along the edge of the river.   We passed a Hamerkop nest, it is the biggest of all the birds nests.  We saw a grey heron standing on the back of a hippo in the water. 

     Sadly, we said goodbye to Blassy (and Freddie) after lunch.  Their flight to Dar was that afternoon, as there was not room for them on the plane with us the following afternoon.  Blassy was a little nervous about flying without Rob to reassure him, but figured he would be all right with the help of Bahati the Lion.  Their plane buzzed by the pool on the way out and dipped a wing, Rob was there and waved!  We were very sad to part with Blassy, we had become very close to him, and we will miss him.  I feel we have made a real friend! 

     We went back out in the afternoon for another game drive.  We had requested Kimaro as our guide, and we told him that we wanted to see wild dogs, as we had not seen them before.  Almost immediately, we came across a pack of fourteen Wild Dogs (also known as Hunting Dogs) lying in the shade.  Many of them were lying in a mud puddle to cool off.  They were not shy at all, we drove quite close to them, and they were totally unconcerned.  They were a mottled brown and black color, with huge round ears.  They were not terribly attractive, as they lounged in the mud.  They reminded us somewhat of hyenas, but not nearly so disgusting.  I had thought the two were related, but we found out that they are not.  The wild dogs are in the canine family, and the hyenas are more like bears, but actually have there own family, Hyaenidae.  

Wild dog

     Kimaro told us that they live together in a pack, males, females and puppies all together.  There is normally an alpha male and an alpha female, only these will breed and bear young.  We learned that they are an endangered species, as they have caught diseases from domestic dogs that have reduced their population drastically.  Also, they live in dens in the ground, and sometimes when there are heavy rains, the puppies drown when the dens flood.  We were sorry Blassy was not with us to see them, as he had not seen them before.

     As we went along, we saw the usual assortment of animals and birds that were present on each drive in the Selous, impalas, wart hogs, giraffes, eagles, vultures, baboons, to name a few.  We saw a cute zebra foal with its mother, and a mother elephant with a fairly large baby. 

     We loved watching the giraffes run.  In the Serengeti, we had not seen them run much, because they were more relaxed about vehicles going by, they would mostly ignore us.  Here in the Selous, they would turn and stare at us, and run off if we got close.  The giraffes don't ever trot, they walk or run with their funny cross-canter gait, which looks awkward when they are going slowly, but is graceful when they move faster.  We noticed that they curl their tails up in a ring when they run. 

     Although the giraffes cover the ground quickly, they appear to be moving slowly.  Rob commented that whenever he had seen giraffes run in videos or in the movies, he had always assumed that they shot that footage in slow motion.  Now he realized that is how they really move!

Giraffes

     Then we had yet another new species for the day, we saw two Bush Pigs.  At first we thought they were warthogs, as they look similar.  They were running away from us, so we did not get a real close look at them, but we could see the differences.  They are rounder and more hairy than warthogs, having a somewhat bushy appearance.  They are nocturnal, so it was unusual to get to see them in the daytime.

     We came across four lions sleeping in the shade, three youngish males and one female.  They had apparently just eaten a wildebeest, the vultures were taking care of the remains.  It was very hot, and they were panting as they dozed.  Their bellies were full, and they looked seriously lazy.  Suddenly we heard Kimaro saying excitedly, "He piss, he piss!"  One of the males, who was lying on his back, decided to take a pee without getting up!  Talk about the height of laziness! 

     On the way back to the lodge, we passed the spot where the wild dogs had been sleeping, we had wondered if they would still be there.  They were not, but we went a little further and saw them trotting along the road, looking for game.  Every so often, one would stop suddenly and roll in the sand, as if to disguise his scent.  They were attractive, in an eerie way, when you saw them up and moving.  They were sleek and lean, and looked very fast, as if they would be able to run all night.  They hunt as a pack, and are extremely effective this way.  We watched them as they were beginning to hunt some impalas, until we lost sight of them in the darkness. 

     Once again, we arrived back in camp after dark.

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