Very exciting Kruger 1st day

We had 3 outings our first day and saw a ton of animals. I was unaware of how lucky we were. We first got up at 4 am for an early morning guided tour. In the afternoon we drove ourselves around and at 4 pm we went out for a 2 hr bush walk. 

The morning tour had the highest payoff. We first saw a large hyena right in our camp. It was about the same size as me and I was shocked. It was ugly. Next we came upon the first of many giraffe sightings. In some cases the giraffes were alone, in other cases they were in groups with up to 7 giraffes. We watched as the giraffe rubbed their necks on the trees, almost taking the tree down. We saw many many elephants. The most shocking one happened when we were touring without a guide. We came over a hill and there on the road, blocking it off were 10 elephants. Needless to say we could drive no further. The group surrounded the babies in the center. One matriarch took a firm position staring at us. She was guarding the family. We sat still and after a time the group moved into the bush. You asked Michael if in the one pic we really so close to a big thing with tusks. In fact we were. The elephant was so close to our open aired tour vehicle, the guide thought he was going to reach in or charge. It was scary. I saw one elephant gently feeding a younger one. On the bush walk we learned that all the animals fear people but none make the connection to people in a vehicle. They see the vehicle as a different thing and fear of it has not been passed down. That meant that without the protection of a vehicle you risk being charged by an elephant or other big animal. You do not get close. In the vehicle the animals are 1 or 2 meters from the car. On the bush walk we got to within 75 meters of a huge elephant. The guides said no closer. They were each armed with a rifle. They said if the animals charged they would have 12 seconds to shoot to kill or we would be mowed down. We also saw 4 large white rhino on the bush walk. The guide spotted the rhino and talked about them for a while. The male was gigantic. After we all saw the rhino the guide started walking closer to them. We were not allowed to talk but I wanted to alert the guides to how close we were getting. We stopped 75 meters from the group of rhino. We also saw a rare mother and calf black rhino. We had 4 lion sightings. In two of them we were very close. In fact we were so close one ( of 7 in the group) of the big cats started closing his eyes with me, and I closed mine back (the same way we all do with witty) .It was magical. We spent about 10 minutes with these lions. Now lions when they are full lie back and relax but when they get hungry, they stalk. We watched a group of 3 lions stalk and terrorize a large group of impala. The impala reproduce like rabbits and are the meat for many animals. So many stories to share, but I will just mention other animals sighted. We have seen large troops of monkeys and baboons, wart hog and hippos. Other than this we have seen huge African bees, a big beautiful turtle, a poisonous big spider, and a dung beetle the size of a golf ball. We have lots of pics but can’t really post here.

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