Drive at 6.00, still dark, we got on the shores of mwagusi river just in time to see a wonderful sunrise. That spot on the river early morning is just magic with the sunset, the dew and a bit of mist.
Elephants are often in open grassland, feeding on perennial signal grass and other palatable grasses, we got this small breeding herd that slowly came close to the road, a calf got a bit nervous so the mother came to protect him standing between him and us. She moved closer and closer, to the point she was touching the car with the trunk. The ellie was checking us out but was relaxed, Chiara, Manu and the guest were silent, not even the shutter of a camera was herd for that ten minutes. I enjoyed it so much, was great.
We drove all the way to makutano and we saw 2 huge male lions on the river drive, they actually were far under a baobab but gently walked all the way to us and went resting under an acacia kirkii by the side of the road.
Ahhh I almost forgot, we saw an incredible impala with an aberration of the horn’s growth, very cool
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We took an easy afternoon and went out only around 17.00, heading towards mbagi.
On the road close to camp I spotted lion’s spoor, a big male, he walked on the road a bit then at the junction the tracks disappeared, I decided to go right because I thought that was the direction he took.
After a 100 mtrs I saw another set of tracks, this was the entire pride, I started following the fresh spoor nose to the ground… so much that I actually drove into them before seeing them.
Manu saw them first when I was 2 mtrs from them, I was still busy checking the tracks.. we laughed.
They were spread in the tall grass both side of the road, virtually invisible if not at close quarters.
It was so funny, one of the cubs was busy playing with a recently killed and half eaten leopard tortoise, so busy that it got stuck a couple of times with the head in the broken carapax, wandering around almost blind.
The cubs played, suckled, quarrelled between them and did everything is in their repertoire to make us happy.
The females keeping guard on the bigger cubs and chasing them off if they were playing to roughly with the little ones, the male was sleeping far from the chaos of the youngster.
It was absolutely fantastic.
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