Of a bonnet, a lion and me 27/8/2011

Usual 7 hours drive in the morning... found the lions at the kudu kill, surprisingly the old female was very close to the carcass and had obviously been allowed to feed a bit.... good for her.Later we got the lions at Mdonya juu...they are always a bonus because of how much they play and they did not betray us even this time... was good fun. We roamed all over and tried to get to Serengeti ndogo because Matilde was into cheetah... and we got lucky again..... the same cheetah lying, actually in the same exact area.... he was sleeping again...In the afternoon we went for a walk.... by mistake from the head quarter they sent me two rangers instead of one..... It was quite funny, me leading the walk, one ranger behind me, 3 guests and a ranger closing the line..... 3 rifles for 3 guests.....We walked for two hours and a half and we did see just few impalas and a giraffe.... it was quite strange but we enjoyed many many small things... we ended up on the kopjie close to camp and had the most amazing sunset from there.... My friends were happy and so was I, the feeling of freedom I have when I lead a walk is really overhelming. Me, my rifle, my guests and pure wilderness. But today the guiding work did not stop at sunset....we got the permission to do the very first official night drive in Ruaha....... Nobody before had the chance to drive by night with guests so we were all very excited.....We had dinner and then we headed out, Rashidi was driving the car while I was sitting at the edge of the bonnet with a spot light.... Goooood fun!!!We saw lot of things that we do not often see in daytime, common genet, lesser bushbaby, yellow winged bat, bat eared fox, scrub hare.....The drive lasted almost three hours and while I was sitting there and moving my spotlight around I saw a lion, it was around 100 mtrs far and was coming closer. It was a big male and did not take me long to understand who he was..... Grumpy!!! Now, I have no problems with him but when you do your first night drive in a place where animals are not use to see people sitting on the bonnet you wonder how they may react you need to try and see how it goes... Well Grumpy was the last creature I would have like to try with...Anyway here he comes walking slowly but straight towards the car... I sit there, the spotlight with the red filter shining on him, we are silent, breathless as he approaches... four meters from the car he veers to the back, we start breathing again but then he changes his mind and turns toard the front of the car... the big cat walked in front of me no farther then tree meters and disappeared slowly on the other side..... Man-o-maaaaannn that was not good fun, was great great fun....The only thing we were missing was hyena and Mario was very keen on seeing them, actually he relly really wanted to see one... as as often happen the bush gave us the last gift...... a spotted hyena was waiting us on the car park: Happyness!!!