Out of Africa

Welcome to the 3rd and final edition of Wandering Aidan's Africa saga!

A huge group of elephants by a watering hole.

This baby seems to be the victim of drippy drinking.

The floors in our cabin are very, very slippery.

A hyena! Their physical structure is less graceful than most African animals- their bodies look like they should continue in some way past their back legs, or at least be a little bit longer.

There are two kinds of hyena: spotted and brown. This one is a spotted hyena.

A jackrabbit.

The same elephants as before.

Some of the area of the game reserve used to be farmland. There is apparently still some residual barbed wire, a few strands of which lodged in our car.

This is a male water buck...

...And this is a female. They actually have targets on their rear ends. Of all the birthmarks...

Hyena droppings are often white, as hyenas tend to eat bones as well as meat.

We had three amazing encounters with lions. One encounter started with some lion tracks. Everyone was looking over the side of the vehicle, trying to decode or just observe the tracks. I was the first to look up, and therefore the first to see that the lion was right in front of us. We tracked it and its friends into the underbrush and watched them join a few others.

We found another group of lions sleeping in a small clearing just big enough for the three of them. We learned that lions are not as graceful as we might have been led to believe when they're tired. They tend to flop over in order to lie down. One lion even slept with his back feet in the air.

The final encounter was of, again, three lions- one male and two female. One of the females slept with her head on a rock, while the other stayed awake. The female started roaring, in a way which I'm told was meant to indicate to males that she was available. However, the male lion then started roaring even more loudly, in a way that said to the males, "Don't bother- I'm here too, and I'm much stronger than you."

Note: the video is not playable on mobile devices.

This is the oldest male we've seen, possessing plenty of scars and a huge, beautiful mane. It is probably nearing the end of its lifespan.

We also saw a few creatures with names that I couldn't quite make out while we were driving away. They looked like impala, but with a more brown color (though still light) and slightly altered body structure and horns.

Along with the somethings, there were also elephants (bathing), zebras, and wildebeests (not pictured). Wildebeests and zebras will often hang out together, as zebras eat the top of the grass, and wildebeests eat the bottom.

I hope you enjoyed our African adventures. Next on Wandering Aidan: a live report from Munich, Germany!

Next up: Munich, History, and Beer!