June 26, 2005

Our wakeup call involved someone coming to our tent with thermoses of coffee and tea.

Within minutes I spotted a zebra walking towards the watering hole. This one was followed by four more.

It was very chilly this morning as we headed off for a four hour game drive. We started with a visit to the Goodwin Chimpanzee Sanctuary. This facility houses 25 orphaned and/or abused chimps. They were fenced in but thoroughly entertained us. Once again I was happy to have had my video camera.

On this morning's drive we saw two types of gazelles, baboons, Oryx, hartebeest, a group of elephants, an African white vulture, hippos and waterbuck.

After lunch we had free time to catch up on our diaries and I even got a nap.

We had a second game drive in the afternoon. On this drive we saw more of the same animals but in addition we stopped to see a "tame" black rhino which had eluded us in the wild.

Upon returning to our camp I was showing people the previous night's video when about 50 feet away we heard the gate guards yelling and they were throwing stones. Our guide said they were trying to kill a snake. Apparently they were successful and Phebe went to take a look at it. We later discovered that the guards were excited because the snake was a black mamba the 2nd most venomous snake in the world.

Just before dinner Sheldon was waiting for us and we made a deal that I would send him a copy of my video plus shipping for his entire collection of bottles. (NOTE: After our return from Africa, Sheldon reneged on his part of the deal and I was left with no bottles.)

By the time we finished dinner it was only 8:30 and there was no planned activities for the evening. Since I had taken a nap I was not the least bit sleepy. Who knows what time I'll get to sleep tonight? We will have an early wakeup call and very long day tomorrow.