Zebras generally give us the rear view….something about being shy. Shy with black & white stripes?
A safari is about keeping score–how many animals (or birds) have you seen? After 2 days, we are at 23 animals (70 birds) and counting, which we assume means we’re doing pretty well. Zebra, giraffe, elephant, warthog, wildebeest, gazelle, impala, ostrich and more. Of course it’s highly motivating to know how one’s doing.
For many Safarians, it’s about The Big Five (lion, elephant, rhino, leopard, Cape buffalo). To enhance scorekeeping, our guides jokingly informed us of The Little Five (lion ant, elephant shrew, rhino beetle, leopard tortoise, buffalo weaver ) and The Ugly Five (warthog, wildebeest, marabou stork, rhino, vulture). We sort of keep score, but we don’t have a target score. We just like to SEE THINGS.
Bird or beast? The birders counted this ostrich as fowl; I went with big game.
Which brings us to why you won’t get a daily sightings list or even cute animal pictures if you keep reading this blog. First, you probably don’t really care what animals we saw on Tuesday or Thursday. Second, you’ve seen lions and elephants in picture books and on Wild Kingdom, and my iPhone camera is no match for what you’ve already seen. If you feel cheated, here’s a website for you. Third, we’re interested in context, oddities, humor, the story behind the story, the stuff other people don’t tell you. That’s what this blog is about.
In that respect, we are very lucky with our choice of safari companies, Mark Thornton Safaris, because there’s so much more to Africa–and to East Africa’s ecosystem–than big animals or birds, and our guides teach us constantly. This sounds like a topic for a future post…..
Elephant joke per our guide: What did the elephant say to the naked man? A: Hey, that’s cute, but can you breath through it?
OK, that said, we’ll throw in some animal pictures just to prove we really saw ’em!
We’re the only ones to have this African animal on our list–we identified it as the rare White-legged Schnauzer-Jackal