Thursday 11 June 2015 Namutoni to Halali

We are packed and ready to leave after our usual excellent restaurant breakfast.

It is a zebra day today.  We see them in huge herds and wonder if they are having a convention!

At one waterhole we see a hyena

and at Kalkheuwel we find a young elephant that has met his end.

We wonder what could have caused it – we cannot see his head but the rest of the body doesn’t seem to be injured.   As we are on our way to the next camp there is no chance that we can return to see what will take advantage of this freely available carcass.

At 9 o’clock just before Batia Water Hole we find 3 cheetahs lighting in the grass – well camouflaged making photography difficult.

We continue on our way and find rhino, impala, kudu and a vulture on a nest.

We arrive at Halala at midday after visiting Goas which gives us a good show of elephants bathing and other species drinking.

After unpacking and settling in Erich and Wendy have a snooze while Earl and I go to the camp water hole.  We see a few impala come down and there is some bird activity.

At 3:30 we go back to Goas. There is very little happening at first but then Wendy calls– here come the elephants.  It is fascinating watching them come down all in a line.  They come extremely close to the car parked in front of us and I think the occupants are quite nervous.   A male comes to join the females but they ignore him and when they leave he does not follow.  We feel sorry for the poor lonely guy – but this is the way it works with elephants!

There are interesting birds to watch too.

We get back to camp with 8 minutes to spare before gate closing time.   We go t straight to the water hole and are delighted to find two black rhino drinking.    We are there just in time as after 10 minutes they leave.  Some zebra start to come down but change their minds – it might be because a tawny eagle is in their way or the coming and going of the sandgrouse might make them nervous.

At quarter past six we leave to get ready for dinner at the restaurant.   Our neighbours come to ask if we have a torch as they’ve spotted a honey badger raiding the bins.  This delays us a bit but we manage to get photos of the cheeky creature.

One is on our stoop when we got back from dinner, giving me quite a scare!

We find that we can self-cater at this cabin and will make a plan to do so tomorrow.  It is very basically equipped but we have our own utensils. Unfortunately the camp shop is poorly stocked but we should be able to get meat and canned vegetables.