Wild Life

I mentioned in my last blog post that I have been enjoying some quiet time over the holidays. Over the past two weeks I have been spending an endless amount of time at home waiting for various repairmen to arrive. Sometimes they do arrive and sometimes they don't. I think I've spent an inordinate amount of time over these past (almost) two years in South Africa waiting on repairmen. This begs the question is my house of substandard construction? or is it because I am in charge of Ops and in the past these tasks would have been more evenly split between Mr. Deep and me? I think it's a combination of both. 

Some crude math indicates that I've spent 4% of the time that we've lived in this house at home waiting for repairmen.  We've lived in this house for 646 days at the time of writing and I think I've spent at least 28 of those waiting at home for:

• repairs by contractor and electrician when we first moved in = 5
• numerous electrical problems = 6
• broken geyser, broken toilet and other plumbing problems including no water = 3
• tree felling = 2
• house paining = 6
• air con repair = 3
• refrigerator, freezer and dishwasher repair = 3

TOTAL = 28 = 4.3% of total days spent

This free time gave me a chance to go through some of our photos taken during two recent safari trips, the first in November at Madikwe and the other in a place called Nambiti Game Reserve over Christmas weekend. 

A few thoughts before I share the photos. First, some people might think that a blog post full of photos is a slightly lazy approach to blogging. This is partially true because writing the posts does take a good bit of time and thought (believe it or not.) However, going through hundreds of photos, choosing the best and then editing some of the chosen ones also takes time so a blog post with a lot of photos can be just as labor intensive as one with a lot of words. Second, some of you might be tired of safari photos. If that is the case, I'm sorry but here are some more. Originally my plan was to focus this post on photos of animals interacting but I found some other photos that I just couldn't leave out. Like this one below of a very unique cloudy sky at Madikwe. 

It is amazing how similarly lions and house cats behave.

A lion munching on the carcass of a baby elephant. The mother died during childbirth and the lions "extracted" the baby and ate it. 

A stunning double rainbow in Madikwe

Followed by an incredible sunset

Elephants greeting each other

Kudu roughhousing

The paradise flycatcher with a caught fly. Photo credit Birdman. 

All time cutest photo. This baby elephant is so young he can't even walk properly yet. 

Somehow our friend Jeff spotted this tortoise hiding under some brush.  

Wet giraffes waiting for it to stop pouring rain in Madikwe!

Wild dogs are hard to get photos of because they move quickly.

A de-horned rhino at Nambiti Hills Game Reserve located in KZN.

Elephants under a dramatic sky just before a cold front came through. It was then cold for the remainder of our time at Nambiti.

This waterbuck lost one of his horns. His nickname is unicorn. 

These black backed jackals are not easy to get photos of but Mr. Deep got a great shot here.