Last week’s image and this week’s images were all taken at the Aquila Private Game Reserve, which Holly and I visited back in April. I ended up with multiple images from there that I wanted to share, but rather than drag out South Africa for basically the rest of the year, I’m going to just share a series of images this week. First up is the elephant. We saw this guy one morning towards the end of our game drive. The driver saw which way he was heading and strategically placed the vehicle so that it would walk right by us. I got this shot on his approach. The sun was just really lighting up his side, and I couldn’t help but think what a majestic creature it was. Incredible.
Speaking of majestic, the next morning we had an opportunity to get up close with the lion pride the roams around on the property. When we arrived at where they were, the lions where high up on the mountain, among the rocks (too far to get pictures of unfortunately). However, the driver had recommended I download some lion sounds onto my phone, so I had saved a video on YouTube of a lion making lots of noises. Well, the driver hooked my phone up to the speakers in the jeep and we rolled the windows down and turned the volume way up. At first I thinking it was sort of silly… but sure enough, slowly they all started heading down off the hills to investigate. The lioness in front (and clearly in charge) stopped and posed for me among the rocks. I love her look in the picture just below. Several minutes later the boys came down and after circling the jeep and wondering around a bit, they both plopped down and just stared at us. Our driver played the sounds of the lion again to get them to look at me, and I think you can tell from their faces they were not amused! LOL
More big cats next week!
–Dan Thompson
