Morning Game Drive in Xakanaxa with Zebra

With adrenalin still pumping after our awesome day before, we set out in our Land Rover the next day with high hopes of more cats.  We had spent time in Toronto 'managing expectations' but it was hard to keep those expectations under control after our incredible luck. It turns out the 26 was a 'relatively' uneventful day.

There were some highlights, though.

We saw a small herd of tsessebe, a type of antelope we'd never heard of before.  It's the second fastest animal on earth, after cheetahs, we were told  

We also saw a lovely herd of kudu - this time nicely in the open.  Before this, we had really believed one guide who said there were two sides to every tree: the side facing you and the side the kudus were on!  

Here are some young ones.

Other animals included wildebeest and bushbuck. We also saw many impala.  They are such a beautiful animal, but often get treated nonchalantly because they're so ubiquitous.  We saw one poor impala up in a tree!  Dragged there by a leopard whod killed it.  We stopped by the tree on the way in both in the morning and the afternoon but the leopard was never there.  

We saw an absolutely gigantic herd of Cape buffalo, numbering maybe 500.  Our guide Water said there had been no buffalo at all until this herd.  There were baboon and elephants, hippos and crocodiles, wildebeest, waterbuck and bushbuck.

For me the highlight was coming upon a small herd of zebra.  They just might be my favourite animal of all.  They were beautiful, their shiny coats glistening in the sun.

They are beautiful animals.

As I reflect on this message, it seems that only someone spoiled by a Big Day such as we had the day before could have considered this 'uneventful'.