Skipping to Day 4 of the weekend adventure....for the animals!!

Our planned hike on Monday was rained out, so instead we headed to Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary. It's located about halfway between Mac & Nancy's house & our cottage in Mbabane, so it was the perfect thing to do with the on-and-off rainy day. Mlilwane was the first established game/animal reserve/park in Swaziland - their 50 year anniversary is next year. The reserve was originally the family farm of the Reilly family. The park's founder, Ted Reilly (I believe) returned to the farm after some time away & was disappointed that much of the wild animals had disappeared. The Reilly family then donated their land for the establishment of a wildlife reserve, & the king moved animals from his private herd to help replenish some of the original animal population.

Here's a sampling of the first set of wild animal pictures.  Don't worry, we followed my mother's age-old advice...."don't be the wildlife" though another family-filled vehicle wasn't quite so responsible about it.  This represents only a small portion of the way-too-many pictures I took (Jess, you'd be proud), but it's a good representation.  No big game here - but Kruger Park in South Africa is next weekend & the lions, elephants, giraffes, & more await us!

We'll start with our favorites from Monday - the zebras (in the last pic they're red from rolling in the mud):

Among the first animals we saw entering the park were the impalas.  Here are a few pictures of the males - showing off the beautiful horns close-up.  We thought we were going to see 2 males fight & engage their horns on the ridge, but they disappeared over the ridge & when we got around to see that level again, it seemed that one of the impala had backed off.

Cousin, at some distance, to the impala are the waterbuck. Similarly horned animals (the males anyway) but darker colors. Here you can see the whole body & coloration on this "grandpa" waterbuck who has lost one of his horns.

Maybe it's the stripes I like, but I thought these creatures were also quite beautiful.  Mac couldn't remember the name, so we called them 'white-striped deer' for the day.  As best as my research can discover, they are actually lesser kudu (which live in grasslands & the bush as opposed to the greater kudu who live in forests).  We did not see any males to be able to use their horns to better identify them, but this mom & her baby were very curious & willing to come see our car so we could get some great pictures.  They probably wandered within 20-30 feet (or maybe a lot closer - I'm not a great judge of distance in that regard).

Moving on from the ungulates (deer-like creatures....I believe it's a reference to the hoof shape) to some more wild things: wildebeest & warthogs.  Both are kind of goofy-looking guys but interesting all the same.  And, yes, after seeing a real warthog, I had "Hakuna Matata" from the Lion King stuck in my head for most of the afternoon.  In the background of the warthog pictures is the rear-view of the impalas.

Although these pictures aren't amazing, we didn't dare get any closer (or act like the wildlife to instigate more interesting photos).  Here are the crocodiles - there were actually quite a few in & around the water once we figured out what to look for (big rocks or large ripples in the water).  Here's a pretty good shot of one of the crocs resting on the banks - he winked at us a few times.  The other picture is across the water (as zoomed as I could make it) - the large rock-looking thing on the bank is one crocodile....to the right, there's a long figure in the water - that's croc number two. He had just finished swimming across the dam (remember, that's the Swazi term for a man-made reservoir or pond) & was looking for a place to rest....he didn't seem to think the guy on the bank wanted to share his territory, so he had to keep swimming to find a different approach.

And last but not least a few pictures of the bugs & the birds....the most colorful of the creatures we saw.  I'm not even going to try to identify the grasshopper & spider we came upon (I gladly avoided entymology in college), but the birds we can name.  The first is obviously an ostrich - not any different than the ones in the States as far as we could tell.  This guy was in the bush though we saw another later wandering around the camp/grounds near the restaurant....he must have been hungry for some impala stew too that day! (Probably better he didn't get it, though, as it turned out to be a bit rough on the GI system - or maybe it was the tomatoes...).  The other bird is a white-fronted bee-eater (it took a while to find that name but my pics are dead-on for the ones I finally found on-line).