This morning, we started out at sunrise, as usual. Fairly quickly, we saw a small herd of wildebeest grazing on the grass. I love the oxpecker bird hitching a ride.

A bit further along the road, we saw two young male lions lounging in the shade. They both had small manes, with mohawks on top. 🤪

And his brother…

This is a view of the Sand River as we were about to cross through it.

After crossing, we saw one lone giraffe, and he was walking away from us.

Then, we saw a new animal – a Cape bushbuck. It’s very small, the smallest we’ve seen so far. I assume it’s a female because it has no horns.

And then, surprise! We found a leopard sleeping in the long grass. It’s fur blended in so well with that long grass. Can you see it in the photo below? He’s sleeping in the shade at the bottom of the photo.

It looked pretty stocky, so I think it might be a male. But we never saw the back of him, so we can’t be certain.

Time to wake up!

After yawning and stretching, he decided it was time to clean himself. Lots of licking all over. This is a funny picture – he stopped licking his chest to take a look around.

We watched him cleaning himself for a while. Eventually, he got up to leave. He walked right up to our truck and then alongside it. Here you can see how he is just over the side of the truck. Predators are just not bothered by the trucks.

Time for us to move along. We crossed over the dry riverbed, which was pretty even without the water.

Another truck started down the other side of the riverbed. He had to stop and wait for us to climb on the bank.

We see a lot of nyala at the lodge, but we saw a few of them out here today, too.

This is a female…

And here is a young male nyala…

A group of warthogs were foraging in the grasses nearby.

That one stopped and watched us until he decided we were a threat – so he took off at a run.

Wow, there was a white rhino right across on the other side of the road!

This area had plenty of thorny trees very close to the road. We went this way and had to lean in towards the middle of the truck to avoid being snagged by thorns. That was nothing new, we’ve had to do that every day here and at Mashatu.

The reward for pushing on through the thorny trees was great – a small herd of elephants!

There were several baby elephants with the herd. Here, one was playing with a piece of wood in her trunk. It was cute because the youngster was trying to touch the wood with its trunk to see what was going on.

Then, surprise! The tiny baby popped through underneath the youngster. Goes to show you how small the baby is.

That elephant carried the piece of wood all around that area. She just kept playing with it. Here’s the tiny baby next to her. Wow, that baby is so tiny! I wonder how old it is.

Time to move on from the elephants.

Up in the trees we saw a beautiful starling. They just reflect so much blue and purple. It looks like I colored the photo, but I didn’t. That is really how blue the bird is in the sunlight.

We pulled over for a minute and Jacques took a photo of us. My face is still very bruised and swollen from the face plant. 😜

A bit further along, we saw a small herd of impalas.

Soon, it was time to head back to the lodge for brunch. Here you can see the large bridge over the Sand River in the distance.

Rattray’s has a small stone sign pointing the way to the lodge here.

This morning, I decided to try the eggs Benedict, but without the hollandaise sauce since I don’t like it. The poached eggs were perfect.

That’s it for our morning! We’ll head back to our room to start packing up some of our things. And we have the afternoon game drive to look forward to.