Day 5 - Hlane Safari

Hlane day 2

We are now very well acquainted with those 4 lions, since we saw them again on our sunrise safari today. They could barely keep their eyes open, they were so sleepy. I guess a nights hard hunting will do that to you. We got some more yawning photos which were great. Lions are just magnificent!

This morning, we shared our safari with 6 others from Germany and the Netherlands. They were very friendly. We had a good long chat about Brexit with two on our tea and flapjack break at 8am. Our driver was Maxwell and he knew lots about the plant life.

It was very cold on the safari. I had my thermal jumper on and was still cold. I'll bring my hat tomorrow!

We saw a giraffe too, which was wonderful. It was a male on his own. They are so enormous and beautiful. We also saw the national bird of Swaziland, as well as helmeted guinea fowl, hammerkop, tchakra, cape claw starling, yellow trotted long claw, black shouldered kite, yellow fronted canary, African hoophow and papal crested turaco. I'm sure some of those are written down wrong, but you get the idea. Birds are tricky to photograph on my new monster zoom because they move so fast!

We got back at 8.45 and went in for a nice hot breakfast, then a wander around the camp and a nice hot shower, followed by books on the veranda in the sun. Delightful.

At 3.20 we headed to the meeting place ready for our sunset safari. Our driver from yesterday, Lucky, had requested us (probably because we gave him a good tip). We had a full car this time, but that was fine. We managed to see white rhinos! White is actually a mistranslation. It should be wide rhinos, due to their wide jaws. Black rhinos have pointy jaws and hopefully we will get to see one tomorrow, though they have only been in the park 3 days, so may be hard to spot.

This evening we saw impala, got very close to some huge elephants, our small pride of lions again, ...

We got back at 6 and it was much colder today. I think because it's been cloudy all day. We went for the buffet dinner, which was various stews, including delicious impala stew. Custard and apple pie for pudding. Very camping holiday food! Everyone else is camping though. We're in one of 5 huts!I'm glad we're not in a tent. Too cold! Oh, and there was an owl nesting in the rafters of the restaurant!

We went back to our hut after dinner to read and for an early night.