Chobe part 2

The next morning was our land safari. We hopped in the truck shortly before 6 am, after we had had some tea and muffins. On a side note all our video footage has Sask time on it...it was just after midnight at home...yep kind of funny to look at now.

These are impala. We asked our guide what animal was most plentiful here, she said didn't know but was between impala and elephants. The baby impala were supper cute...Jer got some good video of them.

These are dung beetles. I love dung beetles just cause of a funny story and they are fascinating. The story... a evening a couple of nights before we went to Chobe we were walking back to our room from supper, it was dark so there were lights on the path that were about 4 inches high. I was a head of Jer and suddenly I saw this bug that was a little smaller than a hot wheels car on it's back legs flailing in the air. I freaked out. Usually bugs don't bother me as long as I know what they can do to me. If I don't know what it is I get freaked. I had no idea, just about hyperventilated....it was bad.

So we are driving into Chobe and I see this same bug flying FLYING (remember small hot wheels car sized bug) around. I immediately asked what it was and what it could do to me. The guide said it was a dung beetle and that it didn't do anything to people but land on them. One landed on Kiera and then got flung to my feet. I still couldn't touch it to get rid of it...I got Jer to do it. They are gross they eat poop.

Ok so what they do it they fly around looking for fresh dung to feed on and make a ball out of. So the males make the dung balls with their hind legs. They try to make it as big as possible. The bigger the ball the sooner you attract a female and can mate. In the picture below is a male pushing his ball with the female that he attracted attached to the ball. She basically attaches her self and goes along for the ride until they find a good place to mate. She lays her eggs on the ball so that when the babies are ready they eat the ball. Sooo interesting. I can not remember the technical name of this bird, but the guide says that people call it the flying chili pepper. I love this picture....the beak stands out soo well.

Yup pink bird...can't remember the name either. They were long names.

Big male impala.

Baboons

Soo cute. This baby one was trying to figure out why she was sticking her in water, and how she was drinking.

Water monitor lizard....it was huge.

Yup we saw lions....and lion cubs.

Hahaha so this is a male and female as you can see. But I put my camera down for a bit after this picture cause they were...ah....mating. Yup we witnessed it in real life....didn't take long tho...plus I think she was sleeping the whole time....but whatever works.

There were 3 females a little further away that had 2 cubs. They were cute.

These birds were cool coloured. Jer got a video of them taking a bird bath in this puddle. It looked awesome in the sun.

This some kind of bustard bird. Can't remember what kind of bustard, but it is the biggest flying bird in the world. We have a video that shows it next to an impala. It was huge...just a little smaller than an emu.

Mmm wart hog.

So the last of the animals that we saw on our morning outing was the wart hog. We got back and were disappointed that we weren't able to see any elephants. We were soo sad.

We had the chance to go on another boat ride but decided to just chill by the pool and maybe have a nap instead. We had a couple that we had been going on everything with and they decided to go on the second boat ride....well they saw elephants getting a drink of water and playing in the mud and water. We were ticked. We asked if they would be willing to take us on the round about way out of the park so that we could maybe see some. They said no. we were sad.

Jer told me to have my camera ready just in case....we were with his parents after all, and things tend to work out for them the way they want.

So needless to say shortly before we got to the gate we saw a lone elephant. Then like 2 minutes later there where like 25 that walked in front of us on the road so we had to stop. It was incredible. In the picture below there was a little one walking the big one stopped and glared at us until they turned of the truck. Never had such a big animal look at me soo threateningly.

This is a series of one walking. It was awesome.

We have a lot more pictures than this. We have a lot of video also. Wish you could all see it but don't know how to edit and put it on here. so yeah

Thanks for reading ....only a couple more Africa posts to come.

Chobe part 1

So with going to Africa....hard not to go on safari of some sort. Since this trip was not planned by us we got spoiled by going to an incredible place, with incredible amount of animal. It took more travel time to get there, but sooo worth it. This is Chobe.

We got there expecting that we would be able to drive ourselves down to the resort through a bit of the park. Well we got to the park entrance and the person at the gate informed us that we were not to enter without 4x4. We had a Toyota Hiece 10 passenger van. Not going to happen. lol turns out that if it didn't rain at all we probably could have made it, but it rained a bit, plus pretty sure we would have gotten lost trying to find it in the maze of roads there.

We got them to pick us up at the gate.

Jer and I in the safari open truck....soo fun. This pretty pretty guy is a bush buck. Love the stripes. We think that they took a "scenic" route to the resort to see if we would see any animals. This park is known for it's elephants. We were expecting to see quite a few, but the first animals we saw were these beauties.

We saw five of them I think. There were two smaller ones...

The older they are the darker their spots are.

Pretty sure this was the oldest one that we saw....sooo awesome.

The resort was beautiful. The pool.

The grounds.

When we got there we were supposed to have lunch and then go on a boat cruise. Well they were starting to direct us to the river bank, so we thought oh we are going to just get a snack cause we are late....nope we ate lunch on the river bank over looking the gorgeous view. Awesome food too.

Hehehe another christmas tree. This one was my favorite. The most unique.

Our room....no double bed again, but we were used to it already....no big deal.

After we got our stuff in our room we hopped on our river cruise. This is a king fisher bird. My father in law saw a couple of birds and after that our guide pointed out a lot of birds...some were really cool.

This is a fish eagle. This is the official bird of Zambia and possibly some other African countries.

They are sooo pretty. They mate for life. If their partner dies they never mate again. WOW talk about devotion.

Crocodile in the wild....it was huge.

Oh the sky. I have sooo many pictures of the sky.....it was always changing and I just imagined it being the canvas that God gets really creative on...it was incredible.

Yup that is the rail of the boat....the guide ramped us right up to him.... kind of freaky.

A variety of birds on a old stump.... kind of cliche when you think of African wildlife pictures...but I took it and was right there.

This is an elephant mud hole....they make these huge holes on the shore to coat themselves in mud...this one was a medium size one....they can get huge.

Oh the sky.

Sunset. God and his creative colours.

Part 2 to come.

Bungi

Ok so this post has been long coming. Jer said when I started blogging our trip that he wanted to do this post. Well he hasn't so I am. Sorry it has taken this long.

The last time Jeremy was at Victoria Falls was when he was 13. He was living in Zambia and they had gone on a little vacation to Vic Falls when his grand parents had come to visit. At the time he saw people bungi jumping and wanted to do it. He knew he wouldn't be able to do it then, but he has wanted to do it since. No where else would have been good enough. I have to admit that I didn't think that he would actually go through with it. God is funny. I was freaking out at the thought of him doing it. The day before he was set to jump we were at Victoria falls on the Zimbabwe side, and at one point on the trail you could see the bridge and gorge where they do the jump. We saw two people jump. I got excited. I was excited for him. He freaked out a bit but was still going to do it. I was encouraging him. He had to, we were here.

The morning of he was excited. Him and his brother Derek were set to jump first of the day. We were up early and Jer made sure that his contacts were put in so that they wouldn't bug his eyes and that he could see everything. He was bugging Derek about not seeing the view so how could he get scared. lol. He brought this up a lot after the jump. (More on why later).

Well we were really allowed to take our vehicle across so we parked close to the border and then walked to the bridge. We thought it was closer than it was....but it worked.

The guys went to the building where you pay and they weigh you. Jeremy was weighed at 78 kilo, and he was in line as the 3rd jumper of the day, but Derek went before him so he was actually the 4th jumper.

He gets put in a harness. He is not connected to anything on the harness when he jumps.

Sooo excited but yet nervous too. Here he is getting his feet strapped in. They put it on and then got him to stand and then tighten it again. Look at the beautiful view.

The gorge

This is the where the office is that runs all the zip lines, bungi jumps and bungi swings. They also video tape from here too.

"Toes over the edge. Look out to the horizon.

5 4 3 2 1 BUNGI

The shot above and the 3 below he is freaking out and yelling.

That is why Jer bugs Derek about not seeing the view. Jer saw everything. Derek wheres glasses too, but doesn't have contacts, so he couldn't see everything clearly. Derek didn't freak out at all, but Jer said he couldn't see everything either.

He relaxed and started treating it like he was diving into water. It only took him about 3 seconds to get there. So he still enjoyed 3/4 of his jump. He bounced a lot tho after, he said it was soo fun but kind of freaky cause he was bouncing back up to under the bridge.

This is where the harness comes in. Once he is basically done bouncing and just hanging there they send a guy down on a cable. They have a cat walk type of thing under the bridge that this guy is on then he comes down and hooks Jer to the cable with the harness.

They come up to this cat walk and then climb a latter and then come to the top of the bridge.

The walk of satisfaction and excitement. He said he would go and do it again in an instant. I on the other hand would not.

We we get time to figure out how to put a video on here we will of Jer jump. Or if there is someone that want to do it for us...please come and take a crack at it.

Sorry for the long wait. I will try to post more often. I think I may do some real life in between the Africa ones. I have a lot on my mind. So you may hear some of it. :)

Thanks for reading.