[Worldtrippers home] [Crystal home]
The morning played out like a “greatest hits” collection of everything wonderful we had seen over the past few days. We started out with familiar friends, including giraffes and impalas.
Suddenly, we found ourselves in the middle of a huge parade of elephants out for their morning meal. This was the same herd that Gail missed the other day, so she was thrilled to be able to see them. The two-month old baby was still there, and still as cute as ever.
We followed lion tracks and came upon three males sleeping on the side of the road. Lions spend 20 hours a day sleeping, and that’s how we’ve seen them during most of our encounters.
But the absolute highlight of the day came when Nevermind suddenly stopped the truck. He and Timba had seen some tracks. They both got out of the truck, walked back down the road, and disappeared for several minutes, leaving us alone in the truck. When they returned, they were running. They immediately started the engine and drove us off the road into the brush.
After a few hundred feet, we stopped. In front of us, high up in a tree, was the carcass of an impala. A leopard had just killed it and dragged it 20 feet up into a tree. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for us, the leopard was nowhere in sight. The guides guessed that it had gone to get a drink of water. But the sight of a freshly killed carcass, somehow dragged up a tree 20 feet up in the air, was like a scene out of a horror movie.
Once again we had our mid-morning coffee break in the middle of an open field. But it would be our last coffee break. When we returned to the lodge, we all gave each other final hugs and good-byes.
In between packing, Russell found time to get a 90-minute deep tissue massage. At noon, we left The Kapama River Lodge for the last time and headed to the airport.
We will miss this place and the wonderful people we met. We will miss the animals. We will miss the night skies filled with stars and the early mornings filled with stillness and birdsongs – things that one rarely gets to experience any more.
We have been lucky enough to see much of the world and experience many of its pleasures. But whenever someone asks us to recommend a single place or adventure, we always tell them: an African safari.
