Somewhere Over The Rainbow Nation: Zulu Nyala Game Reserve

It's a good thing a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't think I have a thousand words to describe this place. It is at once dramatic and achingly scrubby; lushly green and dry bone-arid, noisy with bird calls, chirps and cries and silent, save a whispered breeze. Because it's spring, small wildflowers peek out from under the scramble of brush. Because it's spring, baby rhinos scuff and play with their mums. Because it's spring, insects buzz, beat, and bomb you. Because it's spring, temperate days on the brink of warmness are snatched away once the sun goes down.

This morning we took our first game drive and were treated to a beautiful sunrise, giraffes, cape buffalo (the ones with the horns that look like a terrible hairstyle), wildebeests, rhinos, elephants, nyala and oribi antelopes, birds too quick for our cameras, warthogs (the plucky comic relief), and zebra. (Which, by the way, all of us must now pronounce zeh-bra...because that's the way South Africans say it. And did you know the collective noun for zebra is called a "dazzle," as in, 'Look, there's a dazzle of ze(h)bra behind that acacia tree.')?

We had a spectacular game ride this evening, as well. I haven't uploaded all the pics from our fancy camera, but here are some of the 1000 word images from my phone.

Two spoonbills and a great gray heron

Leopard tracks - fresh

bush treasure - snake skin

white rhino and calf

lovely pond...with hippos

three elephants on property - all female

I'm your huckleberry

a dazzle of zebra

white on black or black on white?

not sure what the collective for wildebeests is

friendly fellow

black rhino - you can tell the difference by the shape of their jaw and the way they hold their head (white/down on the ground, black/up as if to charge)