Africa 11: What is it Like to be on a Safari

A safari defined is an expedition to observe or hunt animals in their natural habitat.

Plains Zebras.  Look carefully and you can see brown "shadow" stripes.

Expedition today means staying in comfortable bush camps and venturing out into game reserves and parks in 4WD vehicles searching for animals.

Plains Zebras.  Click on any picture in any blog entry to see a larger version.

Sometimes we drive for hours and don't see anything.  Other times, we see lots of the same type of animal.

Red-Billed Hornbill

We never know from one moment to the next what might show up in front of us.

Slender Mongoose.

When we left on the trip, I figured we'd spend our time looking for large animals.

Kudu females.

But watching smaller animals and birds turned out to be just as interesting.

Cape Buffalo

And watching is just what we did.  Our guides often stopped the trucks, turned off the engines and allowed us to watch as the animals went about their business.  We appreciated this.

We spent time, for example, watching this giraffe forage for food.  They are surprisingly picky.

Also notice all the different types of vegetation and terrain we encountered.

On the first half of our trip we often stopped for coffee in the morning and/or tea in the afternoon.

Those were helpful breaks from driving over miles and miles of bumpy roads.  The locals called our bumping and bouncing over the deeply rutted roads the "African massage."

It was not uncommon to be out in the bush as the sun went down.

Next time, animals among us.

Continue on to Post 12: Animals Among Us, by clicking here.