I just got home from the most incredible trip! But this was the first trip I’ve been on that I couldn’t find internet ANYWHERE we were staying – so that meant no blogging for this one. Anyways, I’m going back in time and going to blog it all :)
So yesterday (Wed the 20th) we arrived at Kruger – which is one of the best game reserves here in Africa. We got in late, were a bit worried we were getting scammed at the gate (we waited for an hour in the dark), but eventually got an escort to follow in to our lodge. The reserve is closed at sunset – there’s lion, elephant, rhino all over the park. And just to remind us of that, as we’re about to pull into our lodge, we drove by about 6 lions 10 feet off the road – all crouched down in pouncing position. For us four southern Californians, this was an insane start :)
We woke up today and headed out for our first drive (I blogged a few days ago about our first drive out – but I’ll recap a little). At Kruger, you can’t get out of your car, but you can drive around by yourself! Well that’s what we did.
Right off the bat we noticed that they weren’t kidding when they said there were 100 thousand impala here!
We found hippo, elephant, crocodile… it was amazing! The scariest was being charged by a huge bull elephant.
As you can tell, I’m putting in some serious time with my newest purchase :)
Baboons helping baboons.
Back at our lodge – this is one of the huts you can eat under. If you don’t like bats, you wouldn’t like this. However, if you’re like me, and you think bats are adorable, you would love it :)
When we got up this morning, these vervet monkeys were raiding our neighbor’s fridge (who left stuff in it). They are so stinkin’ cute, mischievious, and curious. I’m shooting at 24mm on a full frame, so I’m extremely close to this guy – he didn’t care :)
Monkey heaven.
Getting ready for our first proper safari. I’ve dreamed of this for the longest time!
Sunset good?
I liked this one :)
Owls are by far my favorite bird. Every night we drive home to our house (when it’s dark) there’s this long road that if you look you can find one maybe every ten drives. I look every time. On this three hour drive, we saw like 6 or 7. This one was about ten feet away. Yeah, I was pretty psyched :)
Now there’s nothing to write home about with the following photos. Just showing off the incredible resolution hat 22 megapixels can offer…
See anything? Probably not.
Zoom in at 100% and…
… you can see a cervil. The image would probably look even more clear if it wasn’t at iso5000 ;) One of the people on the safari with us had been on over 100 safaris and he said he’d never seen one!
We parked the truck and just listened. We heard lions roaring about a mile up the road and went off after them. It was so dark, and I so badly wanted to see lion, that I didn’t even try to shoot. I just wanted to enjoy the experience. Well sure enough, we found the lion! Incredible.
So far, Africa is all I hoped it would be. Tomorrow has a much crazier day in store for us – and don’t worry, real pictures of lion are ahead :)
Bobby
by Bobby Earle
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