Feb 12, Thursday, Hwange Park and Sabal sands lodge

Again we were up at 5:00 and on the road at 5:45.  It was light, but the sun hadn't come up yet.  MC soon saw lion tracks.  Two sets!  They were going in the same direction, so that's where we went.  After a few minutes we caught up with the pair of lions called a coalition of males.  The smaller one was the lion we saw the night before, and the larger one, was the one we were tracking in the park, 40 km away.  They were both marking territory.  The pride of females and young had been left behind somewhere while they patrolled the area to secure it for themselves.  The larger male would get the lionesses, however, explained Thompson.  Happy days!

Before reaching the park two sable antelopes, quite rare to see, but if you do, it will most likely be in Hwange area, crossed our path.  Majestic.

We went back to Hwange park, eventually getting to the platform where we watched the crocodile sunning on the shore, open his mouth wide, and then make his way back to hunt for his fish dinner.  The hippos showed their faces a couple times, but they only come out of the water in the night when it is cool, to graze. Zebras, gnus and impala wandered around.  We passed a sounder of warthogs and a group of impala antelope as they pranced by. 

Our evening game drive was in the concession areas, we didn't go back to the park.  On this wide vledt are watering holes.  Tonight, the elephants were parading to one of the larger ones to bathe and drink.  Some of them came here looking rust colored.  Then after their bath and dirt dusting they were dark grey.  They make a crust of dirt on their delicate skin to ward off the sun and take off the ticks.  There were elephants of all ages, maybe about 20.  After this family was done, they made rumbling noises.  This calls other elephants to take their turn at the watering hole.  Soon another family paraded in to bathe as the others were dusting.  When they were done another family appeared and did the same thing.  We moved ahead to a distant watering hole where there were a herd of Cape Buffalo bathing.  When we returned to the elephant pool, there were more elephants still coming to bathe.  The female elephants are the leaders.

The buffalo are smelly, worse than elephants.  They would totally submerge themselves in the mud and lay there for awhile.  Birds hang out on their backs to eat the bugs.  There were also all ages there.  Steve counted 93.  A bit later he became very upset.  He discovered that he had erased all of his fabulous photos from his new camera. We all tried to help and find them somehow, but he may be able to have so one recover them if he takes the card out and saves it.  Our camera can do 18X closeups, but his is 26X.  He had some fabulous photos of the two lions.  For Steve it was not happy days.