So it turns out a place called Addo Elephant has an incredible amount of... you've guessed it - elephants! Astonishing. We've seen about a million elephants already, but the calves are always fun to watch. The smaller the cuter, and each one with its own personality:


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Traveling this fast, and in a tight-knit group like ours, we seldom encounter people we have the time to get to know and like ( Read more... )

African highlands, Lesotho and the adjacent South African Drakensberg Mountains (Dragon Mountains), fall like soft folds of green felt and stretch beyond the horizon. This fairytale landscape is very different from the Africa we've been seeing so far. Iridescent green sunbirds with bright red bibs drink from equally bright red flowers in strange- ( Read more... )

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This is Africa for you - a seemingly boring place can produce the most interesting of sightings. I shouldn't knock St. Lucia. If you've never seen a croc or a hippo in your life, this is probably a good place to start. Cheap enough tours will take you everywhere from whale to bird watching, and though the park still recommends not getting out of ( Read more... )

We've met our match, and it's the wild dog. Our check list is almost complete. We found almost all rare animals we set out to see, but the elusive wild dog - it numbers only in the few thousand for all of Africa - has evaded us. We knew Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Nature Reserve had them, and for two days straight roamed its dirt roads in search of the ( Read more... )

I hate the pace we are going at now, but it cannot be helped - we still need to complete data collection in South Africa and Madagascar before Vova goes to the US to write his portion of the book and we stay behind to meet with him again in Ethiopia two months later ( Read more... )

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