26.1.10

FMD

What I have seen today will stay with me forever.
Let's go with order.
I was worried because it rained all night but the day came out clear and sunny.
We drov towards the bridge, wet roads and lotof mud but not a big deal, the drive was still very enjoyable. Not far from the bridge Naiti spotted a male lion on the sand in the middle of the mwagusi river. From my position, driving the car i could not see him but Naiti was sitting on the door and from that point he managed another amazing spot.
Soon the lion stood up and walked straight into water crossing the river and disapeared into the bush.
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We turned the car and went back from were we came and the turned into the road that was closer to the lion's direction
We found the mal walking on the road together with another big boy. they actually led us to the entire pride, 22 cats all together.
the location itself was absolutely stunning, the river running at full speed in the background, some lions in the sand some in the grass dotted by plenty of cleome's flowers.
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Three small cubs around 2/3 months old were very fascinated by water and kept, to the dismay of the mother, going very close to the edge of the river.
The current was quite strong and it would have been dangerou for the little ones to fall in that's why the females kept calling them back and pushing them farther. She was relaxing only when the cubs were very close to her.
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This was already a great sighting and we went on towards the river drive where we saw plenty of general game, zebras, impalas and giraffes making the big number.
We stopped for a sandwich on the main river watching a pond of 20 hippos half out of water, eventually we decided to stay out making the most of this day, we moved towards little serengeti.
there was not much around and for at least one our we saw very little.
Then we spotted an elephant in the distance and we drove towards him, what made this elephant attractive was the color, he was completely red from the soil he had been bathing in.
Getting closer we realized he was not alone, first we notice a small reeding herd of ten under an acacia almost on the road, together with them there was a huge bull, not a big tusker but definitely huge pobably around 6 tons.
We swithced the car off to give them the chance to move. We started seeing more and more ellies... and more and more and more... from one elephants in a bushland we got some bushes in an elephantland.
The elephants were very nevous and came out everywhere from the thick bush where thwy were moving.
I decided to move on a little bit to see if the elephants in front of us decided to leave the road, we needed to get out of the way not to get stuck in the middle of what seemed to be a huge aggregation. I went more or less 15 mtrs from them when thebig bull charged us, I stood in the car, shouted him, hitting the wind screen with my hand and he stopped 5 mtrs from the car, turned and hurried off.
The female were still there but when the male run they run a bit farther and then the matriarch charged from a bit more sistant, she run 20 meters while I was shouting her and then went back.
Elephants were everywhere and still very nervous, we moved towards a bigger road and elphants went ballistic. We heared trumpetic and rumbling from every direction on from a narrow valley came out an umlievable quantity of pachiderms and all of them went running towards the woodland.
we had elephants on the right side, in front of us, on the left side and behind us, and many of them were vocalizing at the top of their lungs.
We managed to stay out of the way but the show was impressive, the loudest concert I have ever heard, another female charged us but I drove off and got in front of the heard in order to have a better escape route in case the herd became too aggressive, the moment was quite adrenalinic but both we and the ellies behaved properly and eventually some of them cooled down.
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It was one of the most majestic time of my life in the bush, Naiti and me estimated the herd no less hen 300 strong, never seen something like that, never been in the middle of something like that.... I still cannot believe we were in the middle of 300 elephant, that we could see only few in the beginning and that they all came out form nowhere like ghosts, I cannot forget the sound of hundreds of them trumpeting and rumbling. I cannot forget the sight of hundreds of them storming through the bush. There are nowords I can use to describe what we felt today and the feeling i still got under my skin

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