Game On!

And then was Addo!  The Addo Elephant Sanctuary is our first game park, and is maybe 400 square km of rolling "Addo bush", an assortment of shrubs so thick and thorny that only elephants can penetrate it. You just drive yourself along miles of twisting roads, stumbling across animals everywhere, especially around watering holes. I'll try to list the others, but the elephants are the prime spectacle. We were lucky enough to see two herds at the same hole, at least 70 huge beasts ranging from a gigantic bull to juveniles to spindly babies. You have to stay in your vehicle, but you're still very close to these beautiful giants as they drink, spray cooling mud on themselves (it was 38 degrees yesterday), cavort, tussle, mate (!!!) and move around in a herd. One baby tried to approach the wrong mother, and was shoved away with much squealing and trumpeting. Another pair sat in the water, wrestling playfully. Everyone took a turn wallowing in a special mud hole.
At the same watering hole were families of warthogs, our favourites, scurrying around in their busy way, grazing and drinking, ever wary of the elephants, who are very possessive of their space.
Also there are birds, dung beetles, turtles, and herds of gorgeous zebra, buffalo and all manner of bok: springbok, bondebok, steenbok, hartebeast, kudu, nyala, impala and likely others I've misspelled and forgotten. Did I mention giraffes? Ostriches? I feel like I've seen every possible beast, but there are more lurking. The park has lions and rhinos too, but we haven't seen them yet (we did spend a while staring at a bush that lions were allegedly behind!). So it's been a great introduction to the joys of game spotting, and seems very natural and wild, no enclosures except a perimeter fence that surrounds a vast area. We also saw lots more game over the fence of Addo and other private game reserves on our way back to the farm guest house we all shared.
I'm back to the mode where I have no control over the pic order, so here's a jumbled sampler.