The first animal spotting was a small herd of Sable. The massive horns on these beasts are actually proving to be detrimental to their survival, although it provides a good defence against their own kind and predators, it is proving difficult for these guys to run through the low shrub that has started to take over these parts of the landscape, the thick bush easily catches on their large horns resulting in seconds lost in a running escape.
Addo gets its name for a simple reason, its got a shit tonne of elephant shit. housing one of the biggest dung beetle population of any park. Oh! its got tonnes of elephants too! We managed to stop and watch a heard of around 20 elephants around the water hole for about 15minutes until some big dick of an elephant came along and kicked them all out. The little baby in the second picture was a mere few months old, still hand learnt what the hell the thing was on the front of his face, no idea what to do with his trunk he just stood there watching his bros drink and squirt each other.
The bat-eared fox.. what an adventure, moments from entering the park our guide got a call from one of his friends saying there has been a bat-eared fox siting on the oposite side of the park, to us we were un-sure what was happening until our guide slammed the foot to the floor told us to hold on for dear life as we drove 70km/hr off road over so massive terrain. about 15min later we turned up to see this lonely bat-eared fox, according to Alwins friend, no one has seen one of these little guys on a safari in the last 7 years! something quite special to see. The little fox uses his massive ears to hear what is happening subterranean, by putting his ear to the ground he can hear termites and then dig them up for lunch! :-)
As the sun started to set we were racing across the park to see the kings of the jungle, the 45-200mm is being tested a lot on this trip. its doing ok but occasionally it struggles having such a high f stop, thankfully the new m4/3 sensors can handle some nice high iso to keep the shutter speed high.
These lions, easily summed up in three words, fat, dumb, and happy. They looked well feed and were sound asleep when we found them lying a few metres away from us. Alwin decided to try wake them up, as he went to grab some stones to thow at them the famous 'friend' and fox spotting extraordinaire showed us a cool little trick, squeeze and empty water bottle, boom these cats looked straight at us. bolted straight up from their slumber and gave us a good snarl, as if to say.. 'You kidding me? piss off, im sleeping.'