I’ve been home a week and a half or so and am definitely back to work and back to my normal life. However, I find my mind wandering back to Africa every chance it gets. I think it is fair to say it will take a while for it to all sink in and settle out but in the meantime I thought I’d share some photos to give you a bit of an idea as to what we saw.

One of the first things we saw were these two white rhinos…

In this reserve, many of the rhinos have had their horns cut off, at least partially, which makes them much less attractive to poachers.

One of the birds I really wanted to see on this trip was an ostrich. Lucky me, because I saw more than a few!

We even saw this one on her nest with three babies. The eggs you can see will probably never hatch and have been abandoned. Sometimes more than one female lays eggs in a nest. In this case these eggs may have belonged to another female. As they used to say on Facebook, it’s complicated.

Not long after, we saw our first meerkat, a mama to be, standing guard, rubbing her belly.

One of the most beautiful and exciting birds we saw was this African hoopoe. It pretty much posed for us.

We saw our first giraffe and were wowed by the grace and nobility…

and then we saw our first elephants!

This is just a little sampling of how the trip began…I’ll be posting more so check back in when you can.