Overnight we heard lion and a very noisy and persistent fiery necked nightjar.
Today's walk started where we left off yesterday - today we did see elephant while on foot but the first ones we saw, as we were downwind, didn't have a clue we were there and walked quite close to us. The most important piece of equipment Moli has is a sock full of ash which he shakes to see which way the wind is blowing - having sighted elephants we then plot our course so we can walk in to see them without them ever knowing we were there.
Then as we were walking through the undergrowth near the river we almost walked into a big male elephant - not sure who was more surprised but because he had an escape route and after raising his eyes and tusks and looking at us he walked away. Phew!
We also saw leopard tracks and poo it no leopard and woolly necked storks who were probably on a migration route.
The drive back took longer today as we had walked even further upstream but we did stop the jeep to give way to a lovely chameleon - which Moli scooped up and assisted to a bush, after we had had a good look and it had crawled onto his hat!
After lunch we had potentially several hours to relax and catch up in our tent but relaxing lunchtime conversation ate into that seemingly long gap!
Our afternoon drive took in a different area - two hours out and one hour back. We saw a grosbeak - a bird not often seen- banded mongoose, dwarf mongoose, Von der deckens hornbill, of course the Ruaha hornbill ( today's photo - note the black eye) and a female tuskless elephant or boodie who wanted to mock charge our vehicle ( best to sit still as she got more excited and encouraged every time we started the engine).
The baobabs in the sunset were beautiful so after taking some pictures we headed back and tonight the dusk revealed a much smaller young civet seemingly going it alone.
We could also smell the smoke in the air from the fires which were still burning in the conservation area. The smoke made the afternoons cloudier - but no rain.
Some of the best advice we had from
Moli was to drink at least two large bottles of water in the morning and 1 in the afternoon - we obediently did this and he was right we didn't dehydrate through the holiday and there were no headaches or upset tummies!
As we got into bed I could hear lions roaring ......but where?