The first thing we did was go to our "cabin" for lunch. The complex is actually 4-5 concrete buildings, including the main house, which consists of a kitchen, dining room/living room, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. Pretty nice "camping!" We were told that tomorrow we'll be in tents, though.
After lunch, we spent the entire afternoon driving around the park looking for animals. Our vehicle is a mini-bus with a roof that can be raised so we can stand up and take photos in the fresh air. It's a pretty sweet setup. We started the day just hoping to see some cool animals from a distance. We were not disappointed -- we ended up seeing tons and tons of animals, at very close range!
Here's a list of the animals we saw today, just off the top of my head (and I'm not listing birds -- we saw tons of birds, but they are boring): zebra, giraffe, water buffalo, impala, waterbuck, pelicans (ok, one bird), baboons, colobus monkey, velvet monkey, white rhino, and LIONS! We got so many amazing photos. Swasti and Matt were able to get the best ones due to their deluxe cameras, but I got some cool ones with my "regular" camera that I borrowed from the university TLTC office. Some of my favorites are below, so you can see how close we were to the animals (because my zoom is very weak).
The lions were of course the most exciting for us. We actually got to see a male/female pair lounging around, and our guide told us that twice a year for four days in a row, they mate every 15-20 minutes. So that's why they are so tired! But our timing was ideal, because after we waited around 15 minutes, sure enough, they both got up, sniffed around, did the deed, and went back to sleep. We felt very lucky to have invaded their privacy in such a way! I'm sure some day the female lion will be all embarrassed that there are compromising photos of her in circulation, like Kim Kardashian.
We're all tired out from the amazing day. It's hard for all of us to believe that as I'm writing this, we've only been in Africa for 22 hours.
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