March 8 – Durban, South Africa

We are off quite early today for an hour and a half bus drive into the South African countryside.  It is actually cool and a bit rainy today.  Not at all what one would expect from the stereotypes we have of African weather and terrain.  But the countryside is quite green so it is obvious that they get a reasonable amount of rain.

We are doing an animal safari in the Tala Game Reserve.  The reserve was teaming with wildlife of all types.  

Just outside the lodge we say a number of yellow weaver nests.  They have very distinctive "bag" shape.  

We saw a number of birds including:

a Blacksmith lapwing,

several brilliant Southern red bishops,

Ibis,

Ostriches,

a thin-tailed wader that we couldn't get a picture of (but it had a long thin tail), and Egyptian Geese and red knot coots.

We also saw a lot of Red billed ox peckers (they ride around on the rhinos and eat the insects on their hides)

Animals we saw included Kudus,

Blesbucks,

Blue Wildebeests,

and a white rhino mother and daughter.  They had no horns.  The staff cuts off the horns to make the rhinos less desirable for the poachers.

And we saw lots of zebras.  The guide even knew the names of some of the individual zebras.

We saw a five day old zebra foal.

We also saw quite a few impalas (the males have horns, the females don’t)

a lone warthog,

Nyalas,

a couple of hippos (the reserve only has 4) (but no good pictures),

Giraffes,

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Watch video of Giraffe drinking.  They need to spread their legs out.
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Watch video of giraffe walking.
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A leopard tortoise,

And a water monitor lizard.

Quite a list.  We thoroughly enjoyed the game drive.  

At the end of the drive we ended up back at the lodge for bathroom breaks, refreshments and a stroll through the gift shop.

Fortunately, while it rained driving both to and from the reserve we didn’t actually get any rain at the reserve itself.  But it did stay overcast so it never got too rainy.  Such luck.

Another very late lunch back at the ship and more milkshakes.  This it getting very bad.

The entertainment tonight was Ben Mills from the UK.  He played the piano and guitar and sang.  He has played with a number of major performers, including Bruce Springsteen, Rod Steward and others.  He was okay but not our favorite performer.