On safari...

The days took on a familiar rhythm – up early, game drive, breakfast, big relocation drive with box lunch, afternoon drinkies on arrival, game drive, dinner, in bed by 2130 or so... there were no real late nights around the fire – I was just too overwhelmed by everything I had seen during the day.  The lodges were all beautiful and incredibly luxurious, but under canvas in the Serengeti was the most extraordinary thing I did and it's something I will never forget,

I started out making a list of everything I had seen but stopped when I had filled two A4 pages with scribble...

Lions eating a fresh kill and snoozing under a tree, a baby zebra taking his first steps under the protective watch of his mother, giraffe standing together facing in different directions trying to look like an acacia tree, elephants washing each other in a waterhole, ostriches going for a morning jog, warthog charging around looking all feisty, and literally hundreds of thousands of wildebeest just standing still, chewing grass.  

Driving on the long, hot, dusty and bumpy tracks which make up most game parks and private reserves in any part of Africa, you can never imagine what it is going to be like when you finally see what you have come all the way to see - animals in the wild.

I find it a bit difficult to describe that first elephant sighting (they have been a passion of mine since childhood) – she was only about 10 metres away and looking right at me - unbelievable.  I could hardly get the camera sorted and in front of me - I was too busy making the most of the heavy duty eye to eye contact!

If animals is what you want to see, East Africa is just waiting for you...