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| A mom and her calf with the possible huge matriarch in the background. |
“Sighting of the Day in the Bush”
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| Most weekdays, Josiah comes by in the morning to wash and sweep the veranda, rake the yard and clean the pool. No more than an hour after he’d done, the veranda is dirty again with leaves from the trees, pellets residue, and lately, soot from the sugar cane burning transpiring at this time. Tom is always sweeping in order to keep us from tracking the dust, dirt, and debris into the house. By the end of each day, the bottom of our bare feet is so dirty we have to shower again before getting into bed. |
Yes, we know…it appears many of the photos we post are repetitious. How could they not be? We’re living in the African bush surrounded by wildlife. However, we make a point of not sharing repeats of the same photos.
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| There were dozens of elephants in this marsh area in Kruger which we were able to see from the Marloth Park side of the fence. |
The way we manage this is by placing the day’s photos in the “Today’s Photos” folder on my desktop. Once we post those photos, we move them to the general “Marloth Park” or another appropriately named file. This keeps us from using the same photo over and over again, but we may post a similar photo over time.
Then, for the next day, we review recently taken photos we’ve yet to post taken from another named folder. Keeping track of all of this is relatively easy but does require a considerable amount of time each day.
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| If we’d been in Kruger National Park, we wouldn’t have been able to gain access to this area. |
At times, we are concerned we may be losing readers when we’re posting one animal photo after another, day after day. We’re hoping that our readers will remain with us during the remaining months in Africa even with these ongoing wildlife photos.
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| Taking photos through the electrified fence is tricky so we get what shots we can. At times, we’re pleasantly surprised at the finished product. |
If nothing else, we hope you’ll check back from time to time to see what’s new as was the case in yesterday’s post when we described a fabulous trip we’ll be taking to Kenya in 10 months, an exciting tour of “bucket list” venues we only imagined in our dreams.
If you missed yesterday’s post with the detailed itinerary, please click here for the exciting details. This tour will be a “photographic” expedition which hopefully gives us both an opportunity to hone our photo-taking skills which we both need.
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| As mentioned in prior posts, the males are kicked out of the herd (parade) when teenagers. When we see large numbers it’s unlikely any are males except for youngsters yet to reach maturity at 13, 14, or 15 years of age. |
I’m particularly at an impasse in the learning process and look forward to working with Greg Harvey, who’s organized the expedition and will be on-site during the entire adventure.
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| This darker elephant had just come out of the muddy water. Once dry, she’d be the same gray color of the others. |
Two weeks earlier on April 7th, we posted the information about our upcoming trip to Zambia, required to ensure we can get our passports stamped for another 90 days in South Africa and part of our plan as to what we wanted to see while we are in Africa for this extended period…in this case Victoria Falls and more.
If you missed that post, please click here for the details. Once we return from that trip on May 18th, we’ll begin a new search for a location for the next visa renewal due another 90 days later which will take us into August and from there, another trip taking us well into November.
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| A mom fussing over her offspring. |
That will leave us with a final 90 days between the time we return from our plans for November until it’s time to leave South Africa to head to Kenya for the final African adventure.
Researching, booking, and presenting stories and photos from all of these many events will provide us with plenty of fodder for continuing stories over the next many months.
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| Although they were scattered throughout the area, they gather together when its time to return to their favorite areas in Kruger. |
In the interim, until our upcoming adventure begins on May 11th (in 19 days), we’ll continue to search for new topics to share along with the day-to-day we so much love; stories about people, wildlife, local venues, and on and on.
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| Neither the elephants of the waterbucks seem to mind one another’s presence. |
Writing a new story with photos on a daily basis is a daunting undertaking. As we’ve mentioned many times in the past, at this point, we have no intention of changing how and how often we do this.
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| After the rain, there’s some rich vegetation for the elephants. |
We equate this process to writing a newspaper story each and every day. However, in those cases, the news is happening all around the reporters to provide fodder for stories. or us, our stories are predicated on what is happening in the lives of us, two senior world travelers. It’s not always exciting and newsworthy. Who’s daily life is anyway?
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| Can you imagine how close we were able to get in order to take this photo? |
There’s always the plain, the mundane, and the predictable. We kindly ask all of our loyal readers to stay with us through these many months in Africa and if possible, to forward our link to family and friends who may be curious to read about our peculiar lives and to see our endless photos.
We so much appreciate all the wonderful email messages we receive from many of our readers each day and we’ll continue to make every effort to respond to each and every one of those messages within 24 hours.
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| Each day these two females stop by several times with two piglets, most likely several months old. The two females, maybe sisters, maybe mother and daughter from a prior litter or who knows, maybe another relative of one sort or another. This morning the two of them were playing a nose-to-nose game while the two piglets busied themselves with pellets. |
We also encourage you to post comments at the end of each post. You can do so anonymously if you so choose and here again, we’ll always respond with 24 hours.
Photo from one year ago today, April 22, 2017:
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| I started shooting a few photos before we made a mess unpacking our bags on Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas for last year’s cruise back to the USA. We had a few more immigration issues at the Port of Sydney when checking in but worked it all out. See here for details. |