Thank you everyone for your kind comments. It makes the effort worthwhile.
Day 7 Part 1 - The Morning Drive:We had already scheduled an early morning drive for this morning when we made our bookings several months previously. I was up late after the Sunset Drive last night, because I wanted to get all of the Cheetah pictures downloaded AND backed up. Quite a time consuming process with the number of pictures I took, especially considering I was shooting in both RAW and JPEG. This was a 1st for me to shoot in RAW, but I think I will do it again next time. It seems to afford a lot more flexibility in post processing, although it is a real memory hog.
We met at reception at 0345 hours. Our Guide for this drive was named City. We had very high hopes for this drive, especially after last nights good fortune. I can't even remember what road City took us on, but there was absolutely nothing of note. Not that it wasn't there, it was just impossible to see. City drove far faster than any of the other guides and if we saw something, by the time we got him to stop, we had travelled so far that it was nearly impossible to pinpoint where we thought it was.
As daylight approached it appeared that City's goal was to cover as many kilometers of road as possible. He would then race from traffic jam to traffic jam rather than share his expertise (maybe he didn't have any....). The sunrise was beautiful and we had to ask City to stop so we could get a picture.
At one point as we approached the Sweni Bridge, we could see several cars stopped up ahead. This time I didn't need to will the vehicle faster, because City took care of that. He raced up and we discovered a fairly young adult male Lion. City positioned the vehicle in a way that most of us did not have a very good view. Fortunately the other passengers were kind enough to allow us to move around to other seats to get a better view.
The Lion didn't like the attention and quickly moved deeper into the bush. As he did, we saw that he had a companion who was an older, larger male. Unfortunately we never got a good view of him.
We didn't stay long as City didn't think we would get a better view. He then turned around and drove back north and then east on the S100. By now the sun was in a good spot and the lighting was really good. We saw Ostrich
Warthog
Wildebeest
Waterbuck
Zebra
A group of Southern Ground Hornbill
Kudu
And Giraffe
City seemed to be in a hurry to get back to camp and arrived right at 0700 hours. While we did have decent sightings, the experience was far less enjoyable than our drives with the other guides who seemed to have a desire to enhance the experience for the guests. On this drive City left the distinct impression that this was a job and nothing more. Maybe he was just having a bad day and other guests have had a better experience with him. But, for us it wasn't the case.
Stay tuned for Day 7 Part 2......
Daron
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