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.