Full full day! Game drive this morning, Zulu Village Cultural Show this afternoon, game drive again this evening. Hard to keep track of what happened when with no time to sit and think!
daybreak
The day started with a nyala outside the door and the does just to the side. The breakfast buffet was excellent, then on the morning game drive we saw impala, warthogs, nyala, a hippo, giraffes and the second of our Big Five: the cape buffalo.
 warthog |
 nyala doe |
 impala doe |
 giraffe |
 Cape buffalo |
 hippo |
Broad-tailed whydah
We also saw a bird with a tail so long it flew only in dips. (Turns out it’s a broad-tailed whydah.) The long tail is part of its summer dress; it loses the tail in winter, so we were fortunate to see it in its summer plumage.
Quick lunch and off to the Zulu cultural display. It was interesting even if clearly created for tourists. (The Zulu dancers all wore skin tight shorts under their skins — some were so discreet that you couldn’t really see them, others were bright red or with side stripes. I mentioned them to one dancer; he just smiled and said admitted simply: “NOT Zulu…”) Evan wanted his picture taken with the medicine man; when I took it, he motioned me over as if to look at the digital picture and then chanted “money, money, money” under his breath.
 Zulu fighters |
 Medicine men |
In our second game drive we got to see another of the Big Five — the rhino. Not out in the open so no real photos, but still very large and very intimidating! More giraffe, some wildebeest but too far away for photos. However, we got great views of some zebras just before the sun was setting.
 zebra |
 zebra |
We tried to set the schedule tonight for the rest of the week but the weather is very unsettled so I’m not sure we’ll get in all of our entire ambitious schedule. We’ll see. The guide is making serious efforts to steer our schedule choices (based as much on his interests as on ours, I suspect…) but he is generally knowledgeable and besides he is also cute. He and Evan spent much of the evening trying to negotiate a swap of impala horns for good binoculars. (The guide is absolutely green with jealousy that Evan lives near a Cabela’s store.) Gina went down to the tennis court to see the stars (no lights there so no light pollution) and was scared by a bunch of nyala (“there were a LOT of them!”).
Tomorrow, weather permitting, it’s a game drive in the morning at the Cheetah Rehabilitation Center in the afternoon. For now, it’s off to bed — 6 a.m. comes VERY early!