Do not throw flowers on the dog! Or, most probably it means don't pick the flowers or bring dogs to the monument but I really love the international signs.

Chris, this was in the Philly paper today. I said to a cow orker, " Hey, their Baboons look like antelopes". He looked at me very strangely while backing away. Hard to keep the Cellar and real life separate sometimes. :haha:

Yes there are signs everywhere in the park warning people against feeding or teasing the baboons. About baboons, I've always wondered one thing... how come they have such a big red ass? Always looks like a bad case of diaper rash!

Decisions, decisions...

Here are the wines that I have purchased at various wineries in the Cape Winelands over the past 2 weekends. Today is Wednesday and we fly out of here on Saturday night. Now I have to decide how much to drink while here in South Africa before having to pack all of this into my wife and my 4 suitcase. We packed lightly and brought big bags so we could load them up but this will take some planning. You need some clothes to wrap the bottles with and to fill the voids int he bags but the goal is not to go over 23kg or about 50lbs per bag. If the 4 of us dine out the remaining evenings and BYOB and pay the incredibly cheap $2.50 or so for corkage we can probably drink between 1-2 bottles per night which is 6 bottles. We could also split a bottle or so at lunch at the game reserve we are going to so that should leave about 12-14 bottles to pack.

Yes, I think that is possible... I love a challenge!

The goal is not to exceed the weight limit or have to add another bag because the charges at the airport are pretty steep and that would defeat the logic of buying these hard to find and great priced wines and bringing them home for the collection. Incidentally, the lowest priced wine I purchaced was about $2.50/bottle and the most expensive was one at $22.00 which is way cheaper then anything from Napa or even the duty free in Europe.

So you're saying all future pictures will be blurry. :haha:

"Oh the flat plug's connected to the square plug, the square plug's connected to the round plug..."

This is the basic way we hook up to the electric here. South Africa uses a plug similar to the UK but still different enough that you need a special adapter that is not typically available anywhere but here. It looks like a heavy duty one in the states like for a large window AC unit or a clothes dryer. We use a voltage converter to drop the power to 120 and then a 3 into 1 so we can plug in more then one device at a time and then comes our puney little power cords. Luckily the computer AC adapters and my camera battery chargers are duel voltage ready which can eliminate the voltage adapter.

He was just helping her out with a feather-ball.

Today I am posting from JFK airport where I am held over because of a missed connection. We spent the last 2 days in South Africa at the Garden Route Game Reserve, a private game park.

They have a male and female White Rino and she had a baby about 3 months ago. She now weighs around 160 kg and will weigh well over 2 tons when grown. She was quite frisky and I got some shots of her running around and later one of her nursing from her mother as she lay on the ground. The male is in the background and the mother will not trust him around the female for some time as he could get a whim to kill her.

The baby looks almost blue. How come momma got her tusk whacked off and the daddy got to keep his? Great pics. Thanks.

The photographer on Safari! My wife took this of me with our guide, Retief Jordaan in our Land Rover. I managed to mount my big Gitzo tripod spanning the passenger side door and resting on the floor boards and the running board. That way I could take the 800mm lens out in the morning rides. The evening rides were too close to sunset and it was quite grey and not the best choice for lenses.

Once again, simply outstanding! Thanks for sharing this work, Chris!

My condolences. :(

Thank you, for a stunning series of pictures, and a unique look at South Africa.

Oh, and a taste of what it's like to be the trophy spouse of a high powered executive. :lol2:

Wonderful. I love the baby rhino.

Thanks chris.

Here is the lowdown on mama rhino's horn. A Rhino horn is actually not a horn but a type of hair that is very tightly woven to produce a horn like apendage. As you probably know, they are highly prized on the black market and 1 cubic inch can usually go for upwards of $6000 US! Sad but true and all evidence says that the horn boiled in a tea has no aphrodisiac effect as the belief goes. This animal is being poached for a desired effect that is nothing but myth! This Rhino developed a crack in her "horn" that could have hit the nerve and caused a serious infection so they darted the animal and sawed off the horn. The wildlife officials in ZA require the Reserve to keep it in a safe and do nothing with it so it never makes the black market. The horn will grow back and has already grown an inch or 2. The Rhino's actually keep it sharp by rubbing it against objects and the male Rhino here also used his to kill one of the elephants *very \unusal) last year.

Very cool! Thanks for the update. I did not know those factoids about them being like hair. Now I will have to do some research. Thanks again.

Oh, and post more pics if you have them.

Cocktails will be served on the Veranda! This is our Boma or round hut at the game reserve. We gathered each day at 4PM for a glass of the red stuff before our game drive. The view was quite good and the 800mm lens with a 1.4 tele-extender was better then my 12X binocs.

It's Mr. and Mrs. Giraffe! The reserve has 2 giraffes, a male and a female and she is very pregnant right now. Giraffes are most fascinating. They give birth standing up and the baby has to fall to the ground at about a meter or more. They believe that this helps the baby caugh out the fluids from being in the womb. Giraffes only sleep betwee 10 minuts to 2 hours a day and eat most of the rest of the time. They have a complex set of one way valves in their neck arteries to push blood upstream from the heart and conversly to reduce blood pressure to the brain when they bend down to eat plants near the ground. Without this their brains would literally explode from the blood pressure. Their tounge is about 18-20 inches long and can easily stip leaves from even the most thorny plants. These giraffes were the southern species and average between 1.5 to 2 tons and around 3 meters in height. The larger species that live in Kenya can reach 18-20 ft in height because the trees are taller there. They are vey docile and I imagine if you had enough food for them they would make a cool kind of pet!

Leo the lion.

What can I say, I'm a Leo so I love these images! When I first reviewed these images the night after I took them I was glad I made the effort to bring along that big 800mm lens! It was a hassle but worth it. We found the lions at their watering hole and it was a hot day so he had a drink.

Mrs. Lion has a bath...

I love her eyes. And the tounge looks the same as any tabby. By the way, I've cleaned these up in Photoshop and sized them for the web but they are not cropped in any way. We were only about 30-40 feet away from them at the watering hole.

These lions were raised for canned hunts. Those are the kind of hunt where some wealthy prick pays a lot of money and gets to shoot a lion that has been cage raised. They were rescued by The Born Free Foundation and because they were never out in the wild too much they must be fed by the reserve. They are typically given a dead cow or horse or something else along that line. They are neutered because they would not be able to train their young to survive. The male doesn't seem to know he is fixed and he enjoys his sessions with the females. By the way, when non-neutered lions do mate and a female is fertile the male can mate up to 75 times in a 24 hour period! A real Cassanova!

Poodle!

We-de-de-de
De-de-de-de-de
De-we-um-um-a-way
We-de-de-de
De-de-de-de-de
We-um-um-a-way

Happy Hippo ...

Are they trainable, because I just had an idea for a unique gutter cleaning service.

Wait... oh, you mean rain gutters, eve troughs. I was thinking gutters as next to the sidewalk, which would be too low for them. :o
One people divided by a language.

Perhaps if you grew some thorny Acacia in the muck in your gutters it might work.

Wow! Thanks for sharing Chris!! :)

For perspective, how big(long) are those thorns? :eek:
Is that an ant on one?

Me too! They're all incredible though...

he has a gift

and a telephoto lens. And he's not afraid to use it.

[quote=xoxoxoBruce;551512]For perspective, how big(long) are those thorns? :eek:QUOTE]

The ones I saw wer 2-3 inches long!

Good grief, they would do some serious damage. I can see why they would make a good stockade around your hut and livestock. :mg:

My cousin in J'berg has them next to his driveway and has to check the ground from time to time because they can cause flat tires on his car.

Today I am posting the elephants. They have 2, but they are not used to the vehicles yet so they are kept in a large fenced camp so they can acliamatize to being viewed each day and not get the urge to run off or chase the vehicle as they sometimes do. The female is pregnant but gestation is something like 2 years!

I guess we mammals are all the same. Nothing like a good butt scratching sesssion! Shot #2 is the best I could do on getting a shot of the elephant's Johnson which was hanging down between his legs. the guide explained that elephants are like whales in that they can move their penis in all kinds of directions before inserting it which helps them find the right place to put it since they can't actually see what is going on. They average 24-30 inches in length!
#3 and 4 are off the female who decided to charge us and were taken while we were racing away in reverse. Reminded me of the TRex scene in Jurassic Park.

Let's see... after elephants comes eland. The duth called them eland because that is their word for elk . They are in fact different from elk and probably closer to common cattle. They are the largest of the antelope family. I love the horns which are straight with a slight twist near the base. We found a group of about 15 and there were a few babies.

I love elephant pics, and those are some of the best I have seen in a long time. Awesome.

Impalas are wonderful animals and nothing like the car that bares their name

Mr. Wllie makes an appearance! Boys will be boys and this male rhino and male elephant are no different then human boys when they get a stify for no apparent reason!

Do have any pics of Springbok? The animals, not the atheletes (One of my fav international rugby teams.)

I sent a link to this thread, to an old boss who's retired. He's suffering a severe case of lens envy. :D

... and they have mastered psychokinesis too!

Here are some. We ate a lot of springbok there. Very tasty and tender.

Here's why/how.