The drive was beginning to be boring and I was thinking the topic of this blog should be the downsides of safari. The long dusty, bone rattling drive across endless miles of seeming nothingness. Miles between pit stops. The jeep rotation where every third trip you must ride in very back with shorter leg space.but better standing rotation for photography. Then there is the upside, the luxurious hotels that you would never be able to afford if you traveled on your own. The excellent guides who know that twitching of a zebra ear means that a lion is near.

Then the hunt is on, our jeep is racing with the other two to a tree with four cheetahs sleeping in the shade. (At this point Mary wants me to point out that animal researchers have made the pictures less aesthetically pleasing by putting boxes to operate research cameras against the tree. Damn those unartistic fools. Plus they cluttered a prize winning photo of a mother lion and two new born Cubs with a tracking collar on the mother. They made that picture unpostable.)

The next several hours produced two male lions sleeping on their back, two leopards in a tree, numerous elephants, birds, gazelles and a giraffe.

The long awaited rains have come, our balloon ride for Sunday has been postponed.