Well, almost.

We were up earlier than usual today, as our guides wanted to get to a certain area for sunrise to look for specific targets. On the way we spotted some cape buffalo and distant running hyena. All a bit too far away and/or behind tall grass for a decent photo.

But then the radio called out in Swahili and our driver took off. By the time we got there four cars were already waiting. We had found a small pride of lions – 3 adult females and 11 (!!!!) cubs.

As our guide explained it, when the #1 female goes into heat, she and the dominant male get together for several days. About a week or two later the #2 females is ready, so hooks up with #2 male. And so on. Thus, these eleven cubs all came from the three adult females we see here. We never saw the three males of the pride.

Here you can see how close some animals allow the vehicles to get to them. With the above picture we were only about 5 meters away. Below you can see some cars surrounded the pride. What was really cool is the pride had a snuggle-fest to get everyone ready to move on. It started with two of the adults, and then all the cubs demanded attention by jumping in.

Afterwards, the head female started walking away – with everyone else following in single file. The vehicles started pacing the pride, jumping ahead when needed. The sun had just poked out from behind clouds, so we had some great light.

We stopped chasing them as we got close to the road.

This was a really cool morning. After spotting cheetah yesterday, I joked that we could go home now – having seen so many animals. Yeah, we saw lions over the last few days. But this was special. Remember how Tauck runs this “Classic Safari” about 40 times per year? Our driver said they haven’t managed to find this pride in about 11 months. But who knows, maybe the drivers say that every time…

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Here is my first attempt at recording video with this camera/lens combination. I disabled the sound to remove wind noise, vehicle engines and background conversation. I may try to add some music later. I used my video editor on my desktop PC and forgot to “sign off” before leaving for my safari, so my laptop cannot use my normal editor. This was kludged together with a free online editor, which worked better than I thought.

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We then returned to the hotel for breakfast and found some more photo opportunities.

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After breakfast I met a new friend as I was walking to my room.

Just to give you guys an idea about the Four Seasons Safari Lodge, here is the view from my patio. Yeah.

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We had the opportunity for a final, evening game drive with about two hours of light left. Here we found a non-hotel hyrax.

We also found our first Waterbuck, a mother and child. I have not seen a waterbuck fawn before.

Later we had our first good look at Dik-dik. They look so delicate.

Finally, we had our last look at lions. We found three adult females who (we were told) were part of the extended family from the lions we saw in the morning.

Today was a good day. Tomorrow we fly back to Arusha, where we board a bus to cross into Kenya. The second half of the safari begins then!