Family Trip to Africa via Munich – Days 14 & 15

We woke up on Wednesday and had pancakes and eggs before we headed out at 6am.

We found a small pride of lions (all females) which consisted of 3 generations. Grandma, two sisters, and all their cubs. They were playing and heading to a watering hole.

We also ran in to another huge elephant herd by far the largest we have seen. We counted over 100!

We also saw some hyenas and giraffes.

We got our sack lunches and then headed to the airport to fly to our last camp – Little Vumbura in Botswana. The camp is on its own island and we had to take a boat after the flight to get there.

It was a beautiful camp and by far had the most wildlife that were close to it. We took a boat to our jeep and went out for our evening drive.

This was the first time we really got to see a ton of water buffalo. We thought there were over 200 plus. And they were all eating and staring at us almost as if we were some kind of side show.

It made me feel like I had been at a place before where I was doing something (probably either routine or perhaps slightly shameful) and many onlookers just gazed at me mindlessly while shoving their faces filled with cheap food. And then it struck me….THE COSTCO FOOD COURT! Yes! That is what it reminded me of! Many a times have I been spending over $500 min on a Costco run buying a box of 15 tubes of toothpaste (and of course I already had a full box at home in the garage), 72 eggs, and a gallon of tomato sauce. All while some of the Rogue Valley’s finest citizens chomped on their greasy pizza slices and sweating hot dogs looking at me in amazement (hey I love Costco dogs too!). Feeling uneasy and ashamed we drove on.

There was also a lot more water at Little Vumbura. So we drove through some ponds and huge pools of water. At least some pace is getting water! The evening ended as usual with a fire and wine. We let the kids join us too with their ginger ale this time around!

That night we heard some strange sounds all around us. A huge clunk at our door. A bunch of water swishing outside our room. Thank God for ear plugs. Turns out a hippo had been eating outside of our room that night and bumped in to the cabin before he took a bath in our pond.

There were also a bunch of dear treating our back porch area as sort of lounge. Ya know they were just chillin’. Like excuse me, I AM comfortable. It was fun to see.

We saw a lot more of the same animals as before on Thursday but it never got boring. A male elephant even started charging us but we moved on. Our guide Max was extremely nice and wasn’t afraid to take us off road to see more animals.

We took a 90 minute nap and got fried out by the pool in the strong sunshine.

Our evening drive ended that night with a spectacular thunderstorm as we had happy hour out on the plains. To our north was a pride of lions preparing for the evening hunt. To our south was a hippo walking to try and find his next bath. To our east were zebras and to our west were giraffes. It was a special memorable moment as we witnessed our final African dusk.