Mabula Game Drive

We had a great weekend near Bela Bela at the Mabula Game Drive. We went on two game drives a day; one at 5:30 am and the other at 4:30pm. Napping, swimming, and eating in between. Mikaela did really well on the game drives. In the morning she would sleep in my lap and when we would see something she would wake up briefly then doze off again. We saw rhino, hippo, crocodile, girraffe, zebra, various antelope, buffalo, some odd looking birds that was like a cross between a vulture and a turkey, a rare cat similar to a leapord but smaller, a black backed jackyll, warthogs and other animals that I didn't recognize nor do I remember the name of. I am going to get a field guide.
We were driving through the park one morning and came around a corner in the bush and there was a giraffe walking up the middle of the road. The driver had to SLAM on the breaks to keep from hitting the massive animal. Mikaela looked up and said, "girrafe, big" then went back to sleep. It was neat because there were young animals. One girrafe we saw was only 6months old. I was on the horseback safari when our group saw him. He was cute, but big for a 6 month old.
Brian left our room one night to get something out of the car, but came running back in because there was a HUGE male warthog outside our room door. He went back out to take pictures of him. The pictures are a little dark so the warthog is hard to see.

I don't think we have any plans for a Feb. trip but are planning on doing a 4x4 excursion in March. We will be sleeping on top of a Defender truck in a pop up tent. Roughing it in South Africa. Should be interesting.