Tree Agama

This guy is a tree Agama. This one lives in my yard. We have 3 or 4 of these beautiful lizards living around our property. When they are frightened they can instantly change color to match the tree they are on making them very difficult to spot. In the afternoon they sit in the sun and turn these amazing colors. They get pretty big. One of the Agama in our yard is at least a foot long. This one is about 8 inches.

Rain Spider: In Memorium

This is the Rain Spider, and it grows quite large in southern Africa. I know because I took this picture which is of a specimen approximately 3 inches long in the back room of our house about a half an hour ago.
I know that it may pain some of you to hear this but I crushed it with my shoe moments after photographing it. I was actually a little unsure as to whether my shoe was going to be enough to take down such a beast, but it did very nicely.

T of C

A little over an hours drive north of Gaborone is the Tropic of Capricorn. We had to pull over and take advantage of this photo op.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary Part II: Rhino at the Water Hole

This game reserve has a nice restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. It also has a small swimming pool for guests to take an afternoon dip in during the hottest part of the day, when the animals are less active.
After taking a dip in the pool we met some friends for lunch at the restaurant. We had a nice relaxing lunch and had just finished paying the bill when this black rhino approached.
We stood only a few feet away in the doorway of the restaurant. He drank from the pool and got rhino slobber in the water we had just been swimming in. He then walked over to where some guys were sitting outside having some drinks. They sat calmly as it approached until one of them couldn't stand it any longer and got up and rushed to the safety of the restaurant. The other two were right on his heels.
After nearly toppling their table the rhino strolled over to where our chalet was ( in the background of the photo) and lay down behind it and took a nap.
There are only about 3600 black rhinos left in existence. We were very lucky to have had this experience.

Khama Rhino Sanctuary: Part 1, The Dung Beetle

We spent the weekend at the Khama Rhino Sanctuary. They have these nice little chalets that are well equiped with a full bathroom, bed linens and dishes for about $50 a night.
When we started off on our first game drive in the reserve we came across a couple dozen dung beetles scurrying about on a giant mound of poo. Dillon and I were fascinated by these guys and got out of the car to get a closer look. We took a few pictures and left them to thier work. We got back in the car to continued our game drive. We didn't go more than 25 feet before we saw the depositor of the poo mound; a huge male white rhino just behind a bush from where we stood moments before.
There are not any large preditors in the Rhino Sanctuary, but we decided to stay in the car from then on while on our game drives.
That however was not our closest encounter with a rhino on our trip. More on that in part II.

Flirting with the 21st Century

We are finally back on-line after being without internet access for nearly 2 weeks. That is extremely inconvenient, particularly if you use the internet as your main form of communication with the outside world.
At times I forget that we are in Africa, but 2 weeks without an internet connection is a big reminder.
We are off to the Khama Rhino Sanctuary again in the morning. I hope we get a bit farther down the road this time. We should have some pictures and stories to share when we get back.

Since it's a holiday today we decided to go to the Gaborone Game Reserve. It's a 5 square Kilometer game park located inside the city limits. It took less than 10 minutes to get there including a stop to pick up one of Dillon's friends. We were very impressed at the variety and number of animals and birds we were able to see.

The coolest thing we saw had to be this 3.5 foot long monitor lizard eating eggs out of this underground burrow. When we first came upon this big guy all we could see of him was the end of his tail poking out of the hole. We thought it was a snake until he backed out of the hole with this egg in his mouth. We watched him swallow 2 of these big eggs whole. It was impressive to say the least.

Gaborone Game Reserve

Yesterday and today Botswana is celebrating its Independence Day. Botswana became an independent country 43 years ago.