Jumbo –
Day two……more exciting that day one. We now know the routine…..almost natives!
Fortunately there are no Somalians near here as we are in the middle of nowhere – so no need to worry about paying the ransom

Jackson, the man who does, did. He arrived this morning at 6.00 with coffee and hot chocolate and a big smile…..we could tell as it was dark out and his teeth were very white!

At 6.30 we were off – Isaac was waiting for us complete with picnic hamper. First stop were the Giraffes.
I thought that they would have longer necks but apparently these are baby giraffes – still pretty big but I thought their heads would poke over the trees. Having taken 75 pictures of the three giraffes in different poses it was time to move on…………. Elephants. Our first Elephant train. It’s just like Dumbo…..all in a long line with the baby Elephants walking in and around their parents – truly a magnificent sight to see.

Next it was off to see the lions. One lioness and four lions. It’s also mating season. The Male lion picks the lady lion and then is overly protective of her until she conceives. They can copulate (is that rude??) up .
to 80 times a day (apparently)….poor lady lion…….we watched them for over two hours just in case we missed the action. Needless to say – nothing happened!! Isaac said that she may have already conceived as it would make her urine smell funny. (its a lion thing) Personally I think Jessie singing ‘The Lion sleeps tonight’, every song from The Lion King and a huge variety of whistles, sounds and banging of the side of the jeep didn’t help – but then what do I know. Maybe they just didn’t fancy each other!?

Then we saw Jackals (I think that’s what they are called….small fox type animals…quite nervous). Hyenas, quite manky looking and then it was off to see the Hippo’s. They are huge. Apparently Hippos live until about 18 – which is a lot in the Hippo community. They are also the stronger of animals between Hippo and Crocogator, which is good as I dont like Crocogators – however Crocogaators look pretty prehistoric – personally I think their only good use is handbags and shoes…….honestly – whatelse do they do???

Then it was lunch. We shared with the flies but today it wasn’t as bad (not great) as we ate undercover.

This afternoon we went in search of the Leopard, the Rhino and the Zebra. We found none of them. Instead we found more lions, wart hogs, impala (millions of them) toby’s – they are posh looking reindeer and buffalo. Once you’ve seen one buffalo, you’ve really seen them all. They all look exactly the same….ugly buggers!!

Buffalo are ugly looking black cows with horns – really not sure if they have a use?…..I was trying to be polite and say ‘hello’ to them when one bastard buffalo decided to charge at us!! Not good……..Needless to say, Isaac was definitely put to the test to see how fast he could get us out of Buffaloville. Obviously we made it out in one piece and then went off to see the Elephants and Hippo’s as they are on the way home. The temperature had dropped quite a bit – thank goodness for Ugg boots!!

DInner tonight was interesting – we are now down to two families…..us and the Americans. We had our own Chunukah service and I think that the hotel got Jessies’ birthday wrong. I have arranged all kinds of things for tomorrow but tonight there were festivities!! Bearing in mind there are only 9 of us left – the kitchen staff and the hotel staff came out and were dancing around our table banging various cooking implements and a pair of flip flops!! Of course we joined in as it would have been rude not to (as did the Americans) but no mention was made of Jessie!!! All will be revealed tomorrow!!

Now it’s bedtime as we have to be up at 4.30am…….you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out why!!!! Dun dun der…………

On that sweet note – I bid you farewell and good night.

Until tomorrow…………

Anna

ps – the highlight of my day…..I desperately needed to do a wee whilst out on safari. You’d thing someone would think to put a portaloo somewhere but alas NO!! I held it in as long as possible until I could no longer move and then told Isaac I had to go to the toilet. Bless him, he found a nice tree/bush combination!! Gave me two tissues and told me to pee in the bushes….natures way! Isaac is big on nature! Scary shit….not literally but woohooo -I am now one with nature! Thought I’d share that with you!! Good night xx