Our first game drive and, to summarize - WOW! :-) We saw just an amazing number and variety of animals. We saw impala, of course, then some zebra, and some sort of korhaan, either a red-crested or a black bellied. I think they called it a Franklin. And a blacksmith plover. Then the beautiful male kudu. Then a trio of rhino, then a pride of lions! And after that, wild dogs. It was incredible, just far above and beyond my expectations.
Our first afternoon at a safari lodge. From the patio in our exquisite suite, we saw elephants! First crossing the river, then on the opposite bank. It was wonderful, and a sign of what was to come. We saw them just about every afternoon from our patio, both here and at the next lodge.
What a day! It was our first really nice day in Capetown, so we took Melissa's car and Melissa's guest Nacita all around. First to Table Mountain where we saw a dassie. Then to the penguin park where we saw .... wait for it.... penguins! The first pic is chicks, then adults. 
On the way back we stopped at the bay that had the whales and watched them for a while. The first whale pic is fins from 2 different whales. The next one is the classic whale-tail shot.
Our last snorkel of the trip. We decided to sneak one more in before taking off! It was the calmest we had seen it, just glassy and smooth. The first picture is of a little picasso trigger fish. We always saw some of these on our way out, before we even got to the table coral, but they seem to know when a camera is around. This is the best shot we got. 
Then we came across this angelfish, I think it's a semicircle angelfish but I'm not at all sure. It was very shy and I only got a few glimpses, and this was the best picture. It was beautiful! Then this coral had something going on with the tips. I guess the polyps were out? I don't know. You can see how nicely the chromis damselfish blend in, in this picture, most of the blue spots are tips, but some are fish! Then an anemone with its two orangefin anemone fish. The anemone is in the bottom left area of the picture. We saw tons of other stuff, it's really a beautiful place to do some snorkeling.
This afternoon was our longest snorkel. We stayed in the water almost 2 hours, we just kept on going! We swam right out to the drop-off and I saw the Friendly Guy. He's apparently some sort of cleaner wrasse, and I must have looked like I needed some attention. He came over and tried to clean my wetsuit, but gave up pretty quickly. Hilarious! Jack found this flounder, in this picture you can see it, in the others (before it moved) it was fairly invisible. 
Two beautiful coral seascapes. The snorkeling here is really quite incredible! Then a striped surgeonfish, we saw lots of these. Another shot of the longnose filefish, and ending with our first sighting of a blue-spotted sting ray! It's good to snorkel with Jack!
Our second private picnic snorkel. The first picture has a school of chromis, one of Jack's favorite sights underwater. Then the best picture we got of my favorite fish, Oriental Sweetlips. Before identifying it I called it Crazy Fish. It's so awesome! 
Then a very pretty shot of a blue starfish by some nice coral. On this snorkel I also found a lobster hanging out under a rock, but I guess none of the pictures came out.
Our first private picnic at Yasawa, and the snorkeling here is good too. The pictures did not come out very well. Anyway, in the first one is a clam, which I love. 
Then something really intriguing. I first thought this was an old rope from a boat or buoy, but it turned out there were two sea cucmbers. They slowly inched their way towards each other while we watched, rapt. I thought they were going to "kiss" but they didn't, at the last second one turned a different way. Our first time seeing these!
