The River Horse Report: In reverse chronological order...

Where is K? Oh, up there!

I should mention that sitting down to create this post caused me a great deal of panic when I suddenly thought I had lost all of the photos I took on our last two safaris since they should have been in my "most recent" file but instead were nowhere to be found. I was freaking out, especially since these were all photos I took with my nice, new camera rendering them extra sharp and lovely. Then I realized the problem was not the camera, or the computer, but someone, ahem, doesn't know the difference between June and July and set the month incorrectly on the new camera, causing the photos to hide back in last month's stash. Mystery solved, problem fixed, whew!

So, we have had a busy July. In reverse order, C and I spent last Monday and Tuesday night at a great bush camp on an island in the middle of the Zambezi River. The girls stayed home with our nanny and housekeeper and this arrangement seemed to work swimmingly for everyone involved. C and I got to enjoy river cruises, a walking safari, fishing (C caught a big tiger fish!), several naps and an ample amount of quiet reading time while the girls got two days of lots of candy and I don't even want to know how much TV. Win-win!

One of the many, many crocs we saw on the river

We also had very good luck with lots of elephant sightings. Plus, both nights and elephant came and scratched himself on a tree right outside our chalet right after bedtime. Sounded remarkably like a rubber raft being dragged across grass

And we saw many hippos, including several outside the water which just amuses me to no end. Several also enjoyed late night snacks in close proximity to us. They are not quiet eaters!

Earlier this month we did a getaway for the whole family to South Luangwa. BEautiful, amazing, utterly realizing. Had I not had an event that Monday morning I was fully ready to pull out the credit card to stay for another night. We did several game drives, including a couple of night drives, and saw giraffes, elephants, hippos, all of the impala and their ilk, a hyena, a porcupine, warthogs, some cape buffalo, a very brief spotting of a leopard, and recurring encounters with three male lions. Unfortunately, K had demanded to see "girl lions" so the fact that we kept running into these three very lazy juvenile males became a bit of a running joke with us and the lodge staff as it seemed to just frustrate her more each time. We even tried lying to her and saying they were girl lions, but she knows better, pointing out that "they have HAIR so they are BOYS!" T kept saying "hi" and "bye" to all of the animals, which was very cute.

Anyway, school starts in two weeks and I start a new, part-time job a few weeks after that so our summer routine is definitely about to get shaken up. But mostly I am scheming about getting back out into the bush since we have learned that the girls are old enough to handle a trip relatively well or that we can leave them behind and that also works. Both of these discoveries open up all kinds of fun options!