Our First Family Safari

Last weekend we drove 4 hours to the Botswana border to the Tau Game Reserve. The reserve is the size of San Francisco and we were lucky enough to see 4 out of the big 5 - (for all of you safari virgins the big 5 are..... rhino,lion,elephant,water buffalo, and leopard) We didn't see a leopard and I still don't see the big deal with the water buffalo but who am I to question animal seniority! The hotel was fabulous, the kids had one cottage and we had another. Each room had the mosquito netting over the beds, heated sheets ( a brilliant concept that I will use once we return to SF, heated blankets underneath your fitted sheet), and each of the rooms has a deck that is about 5 feet from a watering hole. We had daily visits from herds of elephants, lions, impalas....
We were woken up each day by Ranger Gerard at 6:00 am and would slam a cup of coffee and pile into an open truck and start tracking animals. It was freezing in the mornings but luckily the trucks have blankets. By the last day I got smart and actually wore my PJ bottoms - I am not sure why it took me that long to figure that one out. Why not be comfortable? The kids and Jeff weren't so impressed with what I though was pure genius! Once, the morning drive was over we would have a nice breakfast and had the remainder of the afternoon off. At 4:00 it was cocktails and back into the truck for the evening drive. We were lucky enough to see a den of lions post kill - which was thrilling to Jeff and nauseating to me. You could actually hear the lions chewing off pieces of the animal (dead of course). Jeff at one point dropped his socks (don't ask) and the Ranger had to jump out of the truck and have another Ranger cover for him. It's kind of wild because you can't really appreciate the danger of it all but we were only a couple feet from this den. We were also confronted by a young male elephant that wouldn't let us drive by. We had a stand off for about 10 intense minutes where we had to be very quite. Fortunately we were in very good hands with the armed Ranger and all was fine. Hope you enjoy the pictures!