A sad but exciting day

Today's Wed, June 29th.  It would have been my Mom's birthday today, and I really miss her.  I think she'd love what I'm doing, and I'm constantly thinking about her while I'm here (not that I wasn't thinking about her at home, but it's different here).  I think she'd be really excited for the day I had today.

Today we went tracking for Rhinos.  They hadn't been seen in a while, so we drove around looking for their tracks, and when we found them, we parked the car and hiked into the bush (yes, those hiking shoes are getting good use!) and we found them!  We were with the head ranger, and he stopped to show us things along the way.  The plants, and what they can be used for were interesting, then, to my horror, he stopped at a pile of Rhino dung and started to extol its virtues.  He said it smelled like grass, and proceeded to PICK IT UP and dig through it to show us the grass!  OMG!  Then he started to pass it around, and as I was next to him, and was squashing my instinct to yell- gross, and run in the other direction, I calmly just said, I'll take your word for it.  He then proceeded to tease me that I could have baboons crawling all over me (and they do often poop and pee on you, but I was lucky enough not to experience this- I'm sure they knew I was too much of a Princess for that!) but I wouldn't smell grass.  He then asked me if I'd ever cut my lawn- not personally I answered.  Well, what about spreading manure- no, haven't done that personally either.  Well, apparently this smells better then your average grass manure (and that really does stink!), but I still could not be convinced to touch it or even smell it!

We did find the Rhinos!  They wound up being about 80 meters from us, but were behind the trees, so I never got a good shot.  But how cool is that- I walked into the bush and stood around watching a Rhino and her baby calf eat!  So cool!

Then, for the afternoon game drive, we were able to spot some female lions.  Apparently they were hunting, but I didn't realize this at the time (to me they looked like they were lying in the grass, then getting up and walking around).  They were very calm too, considering there were three safari vehicles around them.  We drove around when they went too far into the bush for us to follow, but we waited around.  We were rewarded by hearing a kill (they killed an Imapla), and we were there within seconds to watch them devour it.  There were 3 female lions less then 10 feet from the cars, but again, they were covered by trees/grass, so no great shots.  As we watched, some cubs came up, and you'd be surprised at the lack of maternal instincts these lions had.  When the cubs tried to get some of the kill, the lions growled, and took off with some of the meat (actually one came even closer to the car to take her piece away).

Overall, and awesome day!
Miss you mom!
Love,
Robyn