We spent 2 days with Norman and his wife at their Bangwe game farm and saw pretty much every animal you would want to see in Africa. After those frist 2 days we all decided that if that was all we got to see as far as wild life we would be just extatic. We were lucky and saw more later, but you get the picture... Here are some shots of the animals we spotted just driving up to the house and then out to go to brunch at a nearby resort. A-MA-ZING!!!
Us in the van with Norman...
Here's a view of their house with giraffes in the trees...
Giraffes hanging out...
They are such curious animals! They will stop and look at you... follow if you move, but if you get just so close, they'll run. But then again they stop turn around and keep looking. Precious!! I am obsessed with giraffes now!
And they run...
Not long ago they had a huge wildfire on the farm, which by the way destroyed one of their cars. We saw a ton of burnt out trees and brush. It's a normal natural occurrence and a good thing for the plants and animals, but here's an interesting thing that Norman spotted afterwards. He said they get a leopard visit the farm looking for food. A mom leopard brings her babies to teach them to hunt there since they have so many impalas. Well this mama leopard dragged two impala carcases into the tree to save them for later. But when the wild fire came it literally roasted the carcases... here what's left of them.
What's this animal?...
Wilderbeast...
Super excited!!
Kudu tracks. I thought I had some pics of the actual animals but I can't find them. Kudu is the 2nd largest antelope after an eland.
Impalas. There were so many of them that I pretty much got rid of all the pictures we took of them. After a while they felt like photographing common deer in the US they were so abundant. One thing I want to point out. Look at their butts. See the black M pattern? We were told that they are the McDonalds of the jungle since they are so abundant and a favorite food of the large predators. Too funny!!
Here's McDonalds running away...
Belly in Africa... in the upper right hand corner is a ZEBRA! Can you spot it?
More zebras... They're very curious...
We were promised baboons, but they eluded us the whole time. All we got to see was baboon poo... oh and we heard them barking in the morning.
This nasty looking thing pierced right through the bottom of CJ's shoe and hurt his foot. I mean - right through a thick sole of running shoes!!
The next few pics are from a resort we visited on Sunday for brunch, called Zebula. They have a golf course, a fantastic club house with an amazing restaurant, a small snake and predator enclosure and then just herds of herbivores roaming the grounds.
A herd of wilderbeast in the back and in the front an eland, the largest of all antelope like animals.
Meercats anyone? Such funny critters!
This one was fully relaxed...
This guy is called rooicat in Afrikaans. Norman told us they get a couple of those coming down to the farm from the wild looking for easy food, just like the leopards.
There were also several lion cubs, rescue ones, which you could pet and play with.
And on the way back we drove by an elephant farm and got this view! They were within feet of us!
Honestly if those were the only wildlife enocounters we had the entire weeek I would have been satisfied. I still can't get over how fun Norman's farm was.
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