Mannie's A-Team

Our last night we decided to throw a party with our team. These are candid shots, many with the flash turned off. You may see some artifacts of the camera pegging the ASA. Truth is for many of us, things really did simply get blurrier as the night went on.

Breanna, Kieran, Justin, Rebecca

Our guide Mannie (pronounced Maahnie)

Jerry and Charlean

Diane in the middle

Bye Carolina Girl (Mary Beth)!

Carolina Girl #2 (SallyV)

The A-Team

Paris

Using miles for your airfare gets you lousy connections. So instead of 23 hours in paris, we made it 72. However, the weather wasn't so nice. Still we made the best of the city for lovers. In early with a bottle of nice Burgundy and a Jambon sandwich.

Found this not 3 blocks from our hotel.


Bike sharing is a growing trend here and everywhere. I still think a scooter would be safer...

Whats with the locks on the bridge thing. We don't remember from our last trip here. But it has been a while.

Doing the ultimate tourist thing. Riding the red bus.

We did manage to find one of the big five.

Luxembourg gardens.

And now some random street shots.

Either Winston Churchill or WC Fields. Not sure. lol

Diane got accosted for doing this. A very irrate woman came over and demanded we delete her picture. Stood and watched to verify we did.

Zulu Nyala - Day 1 AM drive

Day one in Zulu Nyala. An alternate definition for O'dark thirty. We were up at 5AM drinking Nescafe made from nasty tasting well water. I paid for this? In the Rover by 6AM with our new best friend Manie who claims to be an exile from from Zimbabwe. Later we found out it was for drunk and disorderly and getting naked. I knew I liked the guy... But, as we parked on this ridge and watched the sun come up over the savanna, okay, maybe its worth it.

This place is teeming with wildlife. Not a lot of descriptions here, this is a male Wildebeest. Yes the one that goes very nicely with Pinotage.

Every once in a while you stumble over the perfect example of natural camouflage. We stalked this Cheetah into the bush so I knew exactly where he laid down. You could walk right past and never see him.

 

He finally noticed us. Sitting up, he is very visible. And, no, we did not pet this one.

Zebras are everywhere here. They are the oldest horse breed on earth. Can't ride them though, their backs are too weak. The stripes are their cooling system. White is cool, black is warm, the paring generates airflow over their bodies to cool them. The stripes also serve to confuse their predators when they run in a herd; disruptive patterning.

 Female Wildebeests. Notice the stripes to help them blend into the grass.

Poaching is a huge problem here. This Rhino was poached less than a month ago, on a preserve with full time rangers, fences and everything you could throw at protecting them. Just possessing a Rhino horn can get you 10 years in prison. Doesn't matter, the almighty Buck/Rand/Kwacha speaks.

I love this photo, half the time I look at it, I can't see the giraffe. Nature is hoping the lions won't see him either. Maybe you can see him.

Yes more Hippos laying in wait.

I tried so hard to get a picture of these Rhinos with their heads up. But to no avail. This is the best shot I got, you can kind of sort of see them. Manie (our guide) assured us that because the African Rhino has such a short neck they can't flip our Rover over. Only kind of lift in the air. Very reassuring...

Those are the highlights from our morning drive. I will continue to fed the internet pictures (already have several hundred more to sort through). Very slow going. 

Cheers for now.

Combined days 3 and 4

I got so far behind with the blog due to really really crappy internet. Trying to catch up.

Our ride. 300K miles and counting. Toyota tough. I gotta get me one of these...

They told us not to drink the water. We knew exactly how to handle that.

Waiting for a clean shot.

Ranger Manie checking the scat.

You just haven't lived until one of these whips you in the face. Ask me how I know. 

These vultures are waiting to see if the lions get us...

I'm glad this guy knew the rules of the road and passed to the right.

A small herd of rhinos for a safe distance. Max zoom on the camera. That god for image stabilization.

This small pride of lions was waiting by a watering hole. Presumably waiting for dinner. Close enough to make me pretty nervous. Our tracker actually jumped in the truck. I am guessing he was hoping one of us looked tastier.

This guy came over and started to stare us down. I was happy to move on at this point.

We went to a neighboring preserve, one of the biggest in South Africa. The herds are much larger here. But, with the size comes lots of driving.

This buch grew to about 50 at one point. All splashing and having a real nice mud bath.

This small family of cheetahs hang out right at the preserve fence line. There is a rivalry between this family and one in the neighboring preserve. This is the neighbor cat.

These are our cats.

The male is posturing and hissing at the neighbor cat.

Momma and bay in the background.

The old African buffalo.

Warthogs. They run away very fast, so even though we saw lots of them, they were hard to photograph.

Giraffe, the super model of Africa. Check out those eyelashes.

Female Impala.

Wide open spaces.