Normally, I'd break up each drive into it's own post. But the morning drive of the third day was so unusually quiet, that I barely even have anything to write about. Don't even ask me about pictures. I'm guessing that it was because all the animals were full from stuffing their faces the day before.
This was our first hyena sighting. He was a little far away and alone but still pretty cool. Hyena's hind legs are shorter than their front legs which allows them to run long distances with ease.
To spice things up a bit, and since I had at this point of the trip already taken roughly 400+ photos of zebra, kudu, oryx...elephants, giraffes you name it, i thought it might be fun to try a different angle. That's right, it was selfie stick time! No matter what the scene was, I forced myself to put down my Canon and only use my phone camera on selfie mode. Stills and video. (Exception at the very end of the drive, you'll find out why.)
An older German couple sitting in front of us, also staying at Mushara Outpost thought we were a riot with our selfie sticks.
This little guy..."little" guy...gave us a little scare!
But eventually, even Peitrus got tired of looking for the animals. The signs weren't really looking good. The water holes were empty, there were tracks leading away from our area, even the air was lacking the movement of a breeze. Everything just seemed...still.
We decided to drive to a different part of Etosha, about 35 minutes west to an area where a cheetah was spotted earlier that day. There was no stopping to take pictures on the way there. Everyone was over it. "Just show us animals." Just as Taryn was saying she wished she had headphones to bump some music across the Namibian safari, I pulled out some apple ear buds from my bag.
After spending another 35 unsuccessful minutes trying to spot the cheetah I think even Peitrus just straight up gave up trying to find animals. At one point he did a slow stop only to pull over to a pile of dried up doodoo to explain how black and white rhinos mark their territory byshitting everywhere.
And despite all the stories we were just told, he encouraged us to get out of the jeep at a "restroom" stop to use the bathroom. It was a different restroom stop than normal in the cheetah territory. There was a fence around the area...except it looked like it had been bent and trampled over in multiple places. Oh, well. I could run faster than at least half the people on the jeep...and I had to pee so I got off the truck.
On the way back we poured out the last of the gin and tonics for the trip and once again, they brought us cats!
We rolled up on not one, but three female lions hanging out very close to the road. One lion had her paws crossing over all the way into the road. This is where the big camera came out again. We were the first ones there, but not for long. As we snapped away, one of the lions looked right at me. While I am well aware that lions are extremely dangerous wild animals, I couldn't help but fall in love with her. Her paws looked so soft, her breath was steady and calm and she was as poised as princess - no, a QUEEN.
To top it all off after dinner the Mushara staff sang for us.