It's a Jungle Out There

Our safari drives at the Toro Yaka lodge continued to be successful. We were eternally on a search of rhinos and leopards. They hid. We were super close to both on multiple occasions but never seemed to track them down.

We did track down the same lion that we saw previously (the one from the post "I Ain't Lion). This time, she was walking and we kept pace with her for a while. At one point, she looked like she was walking straight toward me! Then she turned and stayed behind our vehicle. I have to admit, I wondered how safe we were at that moment. Dad, maybe you shouldn't watch the video. I took while we were driving in a 4x4 vehicle on a barely existent dirt road.

An elephant we were watching became curious of us. He slowly approached our car. Everyone was suddenly so quiet when this extremely large animal came toward us with his trunk extended so as to smell us. He got especially close to the guy sitting in the front tracker's seat. Very intimidating. The elephant must be several tons!

During our drives, we saw a couple of jackals which are normally common place but were very elusive while we were there. We spotted a crocodile in a pond that we had previously used as our coffee break stop. Can you spot the crocodile because it already spotted you!

At the lodge, much of the staff were Tsonga. They were super sweet and friendly. During our last dinner there, we tried to learn to speak Tsonga from them. They were so excited to hear these crazy Americans butcher their language. We didn't have any Tsonga literature with us, but Ben left some tracts in our room. We oddly felt like two of them in particular were Witnesses so maybe they will be in the future. Penny, one of the Tsonga speaking people, is in the picture with us (the black guy). The white guy next to me is Lance, our guide. The other white guy was a wanna-be tracker.

On one of our drives, we actually ended up walking. They call it a bush walk. We were searching for a pride of 19 lions. Did I mention we were on foot?! We found recent evidence of hippos and rhinos. Again, did I mention we were walking? Our guide carried a giant rifle and gave us very specific instructions so as to keep us safe. The views were stunning but never saw any animals on that walk.