Today was our big lion day. We had booked the GPS lion safari through the lodge for our morning game drive. The lion families are fitted with GPS collars, which makes them easy to find. A researcher joined us in the vehicle to direct our driver. I had imagined the researcher with a fancy iPad app with the locations of all the lions plotted on a map. Instead he had a three-foot long antenna that he pointed around through the sunroof until he heard beeps. The closer we were the faster the beeps, just like in the movies.
Just inside the gate we came across our first group of seven lions, eating from a fresh kill! Then we found out the best part of doing the GPS lion excursion - having a researcher in the vehicle allows you to off-road. While a half-dozen other safari vehicles parked on the dirt road with a limited and obstructed view of the lions and the dead buffalo (they were behind a large bush), we drove around to where the lighting and viewing was best, within 60 feet of the lions. It was really cool. The lions were still in tall grass so the pictures aren't that great, but it was really cool to watch. You could hear the bones crunching as they ate.
We didn't think anything could top that, but we were wrong. We came across another group of six lions also eating from a kill (it was too deep in grasses for us to see which animal). Something disturbed them when we arrived, and they scattered around and started playing! One of them climbed a large anthill which was perfect for pictures. It was almost like a photo shoot - okay Mr Lion, you climb that anthill over there, turn your face towards the sun, chin up, perfect!
We watched this group for about 30 minutes and then carried on. We saw a couple more solitary lions before stopping for breakfast overlooking a salt lake.
In all we saw 14 lions in the morning safari. The weird part about the GPS lion trek is that it's the same cost as a regular safari from the lodge, but you get to off-road. There were two other groups from our lodge who had just booked a regular safari and they were stuck on the road with the limited views.
We had lunch overlooking the channel. We noticed that there were fewer hippos because it was an overcast and cooler day. (The hippos are more likely to come down to the water to cool down on hot sunny days).
So we decided to switch the leopard safari which we had booked tomorrow with the Kazinga Channel boat ride.
Leopards are solitary animals and very shy, which makes them tough to spot. They also don't wear GPS collars. We toured around from 4:30 - 8:00pm looking for leopards but no luck. We did see dozens of kobs, eight lions, some elephants, and an owl, but no leopard. By this time in our trip the other animals weren't as exciting to us, but it was still a cool drive.
All the early morning wake ups for game drives, along with dusty and bumpy roads finally caught up with Heather and she was a little under the weather, so just Marissa and I went down for dinner. Tomorrow was the first day we didn't have to wake up early so we had big plans to party it up, except I was really tired so went to bed early anyways.
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