First of all you find all kinds of animals when you go to a game park in South Africa. For instance sometimes you find a whole group of elders ( A group of elders are called a Zone) resting in a tree. Elder Musisi wanted to make sure I did not miss his smiling face while Elder Reeves was jumping with joy or maybe he was doing some strange mating ritual.

We saw a rhino drinking, a giraffe drinking, and an elephant that just finished drinking and was hurrying into the brush to ….

We saw two Cape buffalo enjoying a relaxing mud bath. A herd of Cape buffalo at the river. And a group of zebras that were no where near any water but seemed to be happy being dry.

We had a wonderful time watching elephants at a mud hole – they seem to be able to crowd a lot of really big bodies into a fairly small mud hole. If you look closely at the middle picture you will notice that a couple of the elephants have their legs up like they are either going to take a bow or do a dance step. The last picture is either of a pair of bookends or two elephants who are about to have a duel…

They came in families – mothers with young ones and really young ones. As a guess the smallest one is probably 3 or 4 months old

A couple of the elephants got rather annoyed at us because we were kind of in their space. The big boy on the left flared his ears and tried to stare us down. I had the car in reverse and ready to leave if he started our way. The middle one is a mother who was watching over her youngster. We were careful to not get between a mother and child. The last one is just crossing the road behind us after throwing dust over its body.

So Mary is mentioning that we have not seen any giraffes when we come over a rise and see this walking down the middle of the road towards us. Then we see them everywhere. Most of them are having dinner at the local trees. Some stop and look at us wondering why we do not let them eat in peace.

They are big, graceful animals and they grow darker as they get older.

We could not believe what that bird was doing! Bugs are one thing but really there must be something better to eat then…

In answer to my complaint that we had not seen any rhinos this group of 6 wandered out of the brush. The setting sun turned this one almost golden tan. The birds do not clean off the rhinos. They follow the rhinos and eat the bugs that jump out of the way when the rhinos browse.

These big boys – or girls for all I know – came within 20 feet of the car. That is probably closer than it is wise to get to something that could probably go through the car without even slowing down. They certainly weigh more. Notice the really long horn on the one. A poacher would love to get a hold of that and since these were within a half mile of the fence to the park, it may just happen. They are losing 6 – 8 a year to poachers.