impalas, and zebras, and elephants, oh my!

this morning we woke up bright and early to go on a guided bush walk at 0600. it was early, and very cold. we had two great guides named billy and chester (who had a striking resemblance to don cheadle) and lou who was in training. they all were armed with rifles in order to protect us. at the beginning of the walk billy was going over rules for the walk and said, "if we see a black rhino, you all hit the ground on your belly, and we will walk away." we all thought he was joking because he was a rather funny fellow, but he was serious. but it was because black rhinos will follow them because they are moving and leave us alone. he said that way they deal with the rhino. well we did a lot of walking, and didnt see too many animals but a lot of animal dung. we even smoked some elephant dung because apparently it has medicinal qualities to immediately rid a headache and clear out the sinuses. it was a bit weird. we learned a lot about the bush and saw some creatures on the way. we saw a white rhino, some giraffes, a kudu, tons of impalas, and a warthog. it was a fun morning.
after getting back to camp we packed up our tents and drove around the park to the other campsite where we are staying tonight. on the drive we saw even more animals! we saw a big group of zebras (and that's pronounced with a short e not a long e, like deborah), tons more impalas, a tortoise, giraffes, napping lions, buffalo, wildebeast, a bunch of elephants, and a hippo! there may be more but i just cant remember at the moment. overall it has been an exhausting and eventful day. it was tough trying to scan the landscape to find the animals as we drove ;) now we are off to eat dinner and go to bed so we can go for a morning drive and then head to mozambique tomorrow!
on a side note, they drive on the left side of the street here. it has been very challenging and interesting making it through that. and another funny part is that the turning signal is on the opposite side on the current car we have so every time we try to turn on the signal we turn on the windshield wipers. we have started calling them the turn wipers!
until later-
megan