5 July. Early morning game drive in Ruaha.

Morning of July 5. We survived the elephants at dusk the night before (what a way to celebrate American Independence eh?) We get up at 0600 and meet Charles and Safir (Sapphire as I call him) at 0630..... Sans coffee or tea! The sun was rising as we set out in our private LandCruiser (bruiser)... and not an animal to be seen. The sunrise was gorgeous as I always love watching the sun rise in the AM. (Must be why I am a night person!!!!) finally as the sun rose we started seeing a few elephants and giraffes.... always love to see these two majestic creatures.
We drove around Ruaha game reserve til 0830 and then were deposited back at camp for breakie. No elephant visitors at breakie, but after we got back to the banda, and read, wrote and showered... we decided to trek up to the office for postcards and stamps. We bought out the desk of their stamps, and headed back down to camp.... well, we tried... as we found an elephant ahead of us chewing on a wicker laundry basket. One of the Maasai men showed us the goat trail back down the hill to camp... and we made it with being mauled by Tembo.

Lunch was at the camp..... no elephants joined us. We went out on an afternoon drive with Charles and Safir. We were starting to get a tad disappointed until we found the elephants and the lions. We found the lions stranded on a sandbar in the river..... .as they were chased there by a group of elli's.

We got back to camp in time to freshen up for supper. This time we waited for our Maasai guard to escort us. We walked a few bandas (tents) on and heard a Dutch couple hollaring for us... apparently they had no torch (flashlight) and their power never went on in their banda.... so they were glad to be escorted to supper. Mum and I were not too impressed with Foxes Safari Lodges (a chain) as they don't treat the safari drivers as well as they do in the north. We got to the dining hall, and found that supper was on the "beach" of the river. Dinner was good... well, passable. we forewent the afters and headed back to the banda as we had to get up early in AM to head on to Mikumi.