Honeymooning Lions

I can't believe we have already been in Africa for 4 nights.  So far the trip has blown away our expectations.  We spent one night in Niarobi and caught a flight to our first camp, Lewa Safari Camp, early the next morning.  As the plane prepared to land we looked out the window to see a herd of elephants and then a dazzle of zebras right next to the runway.  Needless to say we were all pretty excited.  On our drive into camp from the airstrip we were in awe.  At every turn there was another animal.  We saw gazelles, elephants, giraffes, rhinos, ostrich and tons of other birds and animals I forget the names of.  Many of the animals would only be 10 to 20 feet from our jeep!  Upon arriving at camp we were shown to our "tents".  They were spread out all over the camp with great views of the surrounding plains.  We sat on our deck and counted giraffes on the hill.  At 4 we loaded up in the jeeps again for our first official game drive.  The highlight of the night is when our guides spotted a cheatah.  They pulled the jeep right up to the cheatah and spend about 20 minutes watching it move from shady spot to shady spot.  200 and some odd pictures later we were again in awe of Africa.  We were able to get closer to a lot of animals then we had on our drive to camp and got some great photos.  Each evening drive ends on a hilltop to watch the sun set and stretch your legs.  Not too bad for our first safari day.

At 6:30 the next morning we went on our first morning game drive.  We started laughing when we realized that zebras were now nothing to get excited over.  How lucky are we that after one day of safari we have seen so many zebras that they were almost like cows in the Midwest of the United States.  We managed to come across two male white rhinos who were fighting over territory so we stopped and watched them dance around for quite a while.  Next we stopped for breakfast on a hilltop where Phil made friends with approx 200 little red ticks, yuck!!  The evening drive was spent searching for lions, and we found 2 different pairs.  The first pair we spotted was a male and female on their honeymoon.  They were so hidden in the grass that I didn't realize there was a female lion there until she stood up, and we were only 15 feet from them.  We left the first pair after getting a radio call about more lions across the park.  We took off and our guide, Alex, wasn't being shy about getting there.  Up to this point our Land Cruiser probably hadn't topped 20 km/hr but we might have approached 80 as we raced past things we had already seen in our search for more lions. The second pair were sleeping away the afternoon perched on an overturned dead tree and we were able to get a few good pictures before moving on to enjoy our sundowner.

Our third day in Lewa repeated the same schedule, starting with a morning games drive where we were lucky enough to find the honeymooning lions again and watch them mating before we stopped for breakfast.  After eating we went in search of garanuk, the last animal we needed to spot to finish out the "Northern Five."  On our way to a remote part of the conservancy we passed a watering hole where there were 15 or so elephants drinking and splashing themselves.  While we were watching them play another family came down the trail and before we knew it there were 25+ elephants all hanging around.  We took enough pictures to run our camera battery out of juice!  Not far past the watering hole our wildlife guide spotted the garanuk across a valley s owe took off in that direction.  It wasn't until we were right next to the animals that any of the rest of us could actually see them which is a testament to his eyesight.  Or evening game drive sent us on a quest for leopard and so we explored parts of the conservancy we hadn't yet seen.  We managed to get caught in a rain storm and saw plenty of wildlife, but we had our last sundowner at Lewa without having seen  the third big cat.

We left Lewa with over 300 photos (after we edited out the bad ones) and you can see our favorites here.

Check out the rest of our pictures here

Lady Elliot Video

Lady Elliot Video

This is a quick peek at some of our footage from Lady Elliot Island.  We were on the island for 5 days, but only got to dive on day 1.  Ex-cyclone Oswald set us indoors for days 2-4.  Luckily on day 5 a nest of loggerhead turtles come to surface and made their run for the ocean.  It was one of the coolest things I've seen in my life.

Losing our third wheel

We were able to get out of Bundaberg heading south to Brisbane since those were the first roads to open again after the flood waters started to recede.  After dropping off the camper van we spent the night in a 3 bedroom apartment/house which was the only hotel room we could find.  After spending so much time cramped together in the van we were excited to be able to spread out a little!

We flew to Sydney only two days later than we originally planned and got busy exploring right away.  We stayed in Darling Harbour and visited the Sydney aquarium our first afternoon.  The next day we walked down to the Opera House and bought tickets to see a show called La Sorie later that evening.  We caught an IMAX film about coral reefs and then caught the hop on hop off tourist bus to see what we could learn about the city.  Although Julie and I have had great luck with these buses in other cities, the tour of Sydney was more of a dud.  The commentary was always way ahead of our physical location and when we hopped on the bus to Bondi Beach, it started raining and the roof of our bus leaked so bad it looked like we had taken showers with our clothes on!

We got back to our apartment and cleaned up before heading off to our 10:00 show, which turned out to be the highlight of our time in Sydney.  We caught a ferry from Darling Harbour over to circle quay and were treated to stunning views of the Sydney Harbor Bridge with the Opera House in the background all lit up.  The show was two hours of non stop amazing ness.  Between comedians, puppeteers, acrobats, gymnasts, tap dancers, and other circus type acts we couldn't take our eyes off the stage.  

We packed up and shared a cab to the airport the next morning where Tyler left us - he headed back to California and we headed to Perth for a week in Western Australia.  It was nice to have some company after spending so much time just the two of us.  We really appreciate that Tyler was able to take a month of his life to spend with us in Australia.  We wish him the best of luck in his job search!

After landing in Perth we picked up our rental car and headed to the visitors center to make some decisions about how we would spend our time.  After looking through numerous brochures and talking to one of the ladies behind the desk we decided to head south to Bunbury to do some diving.  Our first day of diving saw us going to the Lena Dive Wreck along with two other sites where we saw numerous fish, nudie branches, and even a small ray.  We decided to keep our rental gear for an additional two days and check out a couple of shore dives on our own.  We went to Canal Rocks today and had a blast exploring all the swim throughs and hangovers.  We even saw a really large ray on the way from shore to the rocks.  Tomorrow we will dive Busselton Jetty which is supposed to be outstanding before we head back to Perth for ur last few days in Australia.