We left our lovely little hotel in the financial district of Johannesburg to go to an airport hotel. At the airport hotel we were to be met by our next guide. At that hotel the cement floor in the lobby was done up as a series of airport runways. The runway numbers made no sense. I had enough time to notice this and pull out a compass and check them all and make a mental note of it, which is to say we got up too early. But soon enough our new guide, Simon, arrived. Tall, Afrikaner. Green field hat, shirt, green shorts, no shoes. He picked us, and one other guy up there. We stopped at two more places and picked up three more people. The seven of us are going on a five-day safari in Kruger National Park. So the next five days this becomes a photo blog.

On our first day we saw:

Elephants
Impala
Gabar Goshawk (not pictured)
Zebras
Wildebeest
African lap wing (not pictured)
White spoonbills (not pictured)
White egrets (not pictured)
Hippos
Lions
White faced vulture
Giraffes
Baboon (not pictured)
Hyena (not pictured)

These are all worth a scroll. It was, as you will see, a great day.