Day 14 - Hippos, Elephants and Birds

Once again, I find myself sat by the fire pit, glass of wine in hand, ready to tell you about the brilliant day I've had.

Dinner last night was delicious white fish and mash with veg. Did I mention that we eat on our terrace next to the fire, listening to the very loud grunting hippos, calling birds and just now something that sounded suspiciously big-cat-ish. We spent an hour or so at the bottom of the garden in the dark watching a total of 15 hippos moving around. There was even a tiny baby one! Super cute. Hippos really are quite fast on land, I was surprised! We had got chatting to a couple of hippo-mad Americans from California earlier, so we went to grab them to watch the hippos too. They had binoculars, which was great for us!

We got up at sunrise (6.30) to see what was out and about. We'd booked breakfast for 8 and boy did that time go quick. The mumma and baby hippo were having a wander around, as were some other hippos. They were climbing all over the bank and went really quite far from the river. I got some great photos.

Our bird feeder outside our room was also jam packed full of lots of different birds. We also have a nice orange tree/bush thing that had lots of nectar feeding birds on it, including red breasted sunbirds, a lovely kingfisher and some very beautiful others. We also saw a black white and red big bird that is apparently on the endangered species list. Not bad for before 8am!

Breakfast was delicious. Matt had a fry up. I had omelette, plus we both had croissants, fresh OJ, fruit and yoghurt. Yum.



We settled on our terrace for a day of book reading, relaxing and chilling out with a stunning view of crocodile river.

At lunch, we were half way through our sandwich/tuna salad when a family of 5 elephants wandered down to the river to drink. There was an adult male and female, a slightly smaller make and two gorgeous babies. They were all having a drink, dipping their feet in the river to cool off and then throwing mud over themselves to cool down. The babies were copying their Dad. It was wonderful to see and we watched them for quite a while, all thoughts of lunch gone. Elephants are just gorgeous.

Then, to make our stay complete, just as it was getting dark, a small herd of buffalo came for a drink! They were the only animal we wanted a closer look at on safari and here they were. I know we saw one through binoculars yesterday, but now I feel we can truly say we've seen all of the big 5. Amazing.

I'll be very sad to leave tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to Johannesburg too. We've got a trip planned to the site known as the 'cradle of mankind' so that gets my archaeological fever going.

For now, we're waiting by the fire for our steak dinners to arrive, and enjoying the impressive display of stars on show. Matt is sure he can see the milkyway...