Decided to go for a picnic lunch today and we all felt like exercise so took Humphry’s new-fangled frisby thing along. Brad claimed to know a spot where there were wide open spaces and no thorns so we headed off in the direction of Badumatau. New territory for all of us apart from Brad, who had previously followed the lions around those parts.
The drive there was wonderful and the area was indeed very open and beautiful. Much of the driving was off road and we had one minor incident en route when trying to cross a channel. We had many hands to help us though and apart from getting showered with mud when doing my bit for the cause, we managed to extricate ourselves within 30 minutes.
Eventually we found a suitably open space and immediately set about playing frisby while the children entertained themselves by throwing bits of anthill into the swamp. It really was a souped up frisby and after the first few throws flew about 100 metres and landed a little too close to the hippos we had to relocate. Despite this there were still some occasions where we needed a person to divert the hippos while someone (invariably Brad) dashed in and grabbed the errant frisby from under their noses.
Afterwards we settled down to a great picnic lunch and headed off on our epic trip back. We all expected the return to be an epic because we were cutting across a thick island to the road on the other side of 3rd bridge, but I suspect it was a little more epic that Karen and Humphry had in mind. Think today we coined a new phrase – extreme picnicking.
Spirits were starting to flag after 2 hours of ploughing through thick sand and croton bushes on a hot afternoon, but all perked up when we spotted a 10-foot python near the vehicle. We all crawled out from under the kikois we had over us to protect us from leaves and twigs and insects and got a good look at it. Was a very relaxed character.