Many Game Drives

After a week in camp, there is a daily routine morning and afternoon game drives. If they are all melded together it would look something like this:

Leonard is driving and Charles, Thompson's head guide is in the left seat as we follow the two rhinos who passed in front of our camp at dawn. This is amazing - there are only 32 of them in this vast park. They run fast and we parallel them for miles.

That same day Charles stops and announces that he has to check the tires and goes to the back of the vehicle. We soon realize what he is up to and later we all need to check the tires; girls behind the vehicle, boys in front.

Now Sampson is driving and we are hurrying back to camp,  fast - trying to outrun the thunderstorm behind us. We don't, and it is a wild ride.

One day we pass a tree, 50 yards from the road, and Charles says "there is a leopard in that tree". All I see is tree until Charles points the silhouette of two baby zebra legs hanging below the canopy - the leopard's prey. Still can't see the leopard until we set up the 60x spotting scope and we can just make out spots way back in the canopy.

We are driving with Sampson and come up behind another vehicle where Michael has hopped out to see the snake that had crossed in front of them. The short version of what transpires is that he manages to get a good picture with my camera and not get bitten. Green Mamba - deadly poisonous. 

Now we are driving through thousands of wildebeest with Fanuel behind the weel. The road is very muddy- like driving on butter and we sometimes find ourselves driving sideways. He drives well, but sometimes gives a little grin when the vehicle develops a mind of its own. Later we stop and Fanuel assists with a tow for another company's vehicle that wasn't so fortunate. Surely our drivers are the best in all of  Tanzania.