Tuesday September 15 2009 – afternoon

We took our first game drive that afternoon. Mosi-O-Tunya National Park in Zambia is the nation’s smallest national park. It also has no predators.

Our lovely Bushtracks Africa guide, Purity, managed to show us quite a lot in about three hours. Starting with a herd of elephants even before we got into the park.

My full set of photos from the drive is on Flickr, but here are some of the highlights:

• A family of zebra — pictured at the top of the post. The one lying down is a heavily pregnant female, and her daughter is checking to be sure she is okay.
• A ranger guards the male rhino to protect the rhino from humans (poachers) not to protect the humans from the rhino.
• Toward the end of the drive, we saw a group of very young baboons playing and teasing each other.

We also saw many giraffe, impala, a few warthogs, various birds and a herd of Cape Buffalo. All in all a terrific introduction to African wildlife.