A different camp in Ruaha
Our fantastic walking safari experience had to come to an end, but our exit was delayed due to the fly camp’s resident trouble maker keeping the cook out of the kitchen tent.
As I may have mentioned before, we could get much closer to animals when on driving safari because they didn’t perceive the noisy metal box rolling along the road as humans or anything that was a threat (it was our silhouettes of walking on 2 legs that was ingrained as “danger” over thousands of generations). Thus, as we drove to our new camp, we were treated to a herd up close and personal.
Now after having been on the walking safari, we recognized this behavior, just before they turned tail -
On our first morning drive from our new camp, we found this beautiful male crossing a dry riverbed.
…and as he got closer, it was obvious that he was ignoring us.
Later, crossing another dry riverbed ourselves, we watched an elephant herd digging for water in the sand. Apparently, this is their preference, rather than approaching an actual water hole and risking predators.
Just across this riverbed, we found a number of elephants enjoying a mud bath:
The babies always make me smile -
This one got a bath (whether he wanted it or not) -
Here’s that pretty Saddle-billed Stork again. This was the species that the Fish Eagle picked a fight with, in the Serengeti.
Check out how it rests on the sand bank:
This new camp was better situated for sunset pictures:
