Can It Get Any Better Than This???

Day 3! We have had two of the most incredible first two days already!!! I can't imagine anything being MORE fun, or AS exciting, as our day 1 and day 2! We strike off early with everyone watching and looking! By now, we are starting to understand what a GREAT guide we have in Chris! He is amazing in how he locates the wild game and then positions us for the best advantage to get pictures. Today's highlight is finding the large elephants at Zulu Nyala. At the start of the day, Chris told us to remain calm when an elephant approaches as they will throw their ears out to make themselves look big and impressive (ha! that really isn't necessary as we are shocked at their immense size already!!!) He said elephants are capable of pushing a vehicle over with their bodies so DO NOT touch them! (Are you kidding me??? They are going to be THAT close???) Oh yeah, we have the most up close and personal experiences today with the elephants!

Here's the big, bad boy snorting and slinging dirt as he comes around the corner at us!!! Yikes!!!

This is the moment when he throws his ears out to let us know who's boss out here!!! He actually got so close he bumped the front of the vehicle and Chris had to "talk him down". Once again, my heart is pounding and I'm not sure we should be doing this!!!

I hesitated to put this picture in, but he was literally IN OUR FACE!!! He is SO CLOSE to us! I was on the far side of the vehicle and I could not zoom out far enough on my camera.

This big tusked guy had just wet himself down with mud to keep the sun off his hide.

Two large tusked elephants wallering in the mud puddle. It was fascinating seeing them throw this mud up on themselves.

Well, I could show you several DOZEN more amazing pictures of the elephants, but it takes so long to upload the photos, I MUST move on!!!

Here are some other animals that need their time on the blog!!!

We saw some massive size rhinos! They have poor eyesight and usually move pretty slow (however, this one was moving along pretty good right here). They are more interested in their grazing of grass and not us!!! Whew!!!

This male cape buffalo does NOT look like he has his"happy face" on! He has been kicked out of the herd; a younger male has probably taken his place, so this is NO TIME to mess with him! Cape buffalo are the number one most dangerous animals of the wild game in Africa. They give no warning if they are going to charge. Maybe we should move on and just leave him be!

We found lots of hippos in the water. I really wanted to see one out on land, but we never got that chance. They made a lot of loud grunting noises and snorting! Usually when one made a big growl like this, I was not ready with the camera to catch him at his peak!!! :(

The warthogs are shy, they run off pretty quickly when we see them -- and they are quite funny to watch them run! I actually thought they were kinda' cute in their own sort of way!!! They are suppose to be good eating! We did not get to try them, but we did eat impala, kudu, and oxtail - all pretty good if you did not think about what they looked like!!!

I probably should have given this guy a more prominent place on my blog! This is a wild dog. I was not too impressed with seeing "a wild dog" until several people mentioned what a rare sighting they are and they had never seen one. The wild dog is a top predator and their numbers are getting too be very low as to how many still exist today. They usually run in packs, but this one was alone this morning.

Vervet monkeys! Kinda' cute little guys, but pretty annoying! They were outside our room in Sabi Sands. They would run across the deck and sit and watch you! They know how to open door handles, so you had to keep your room locked at all times to keep them out!