A giraffe to remember.

It wasn’t my idea, so don’t blame me! This post is for one special girl, who likes giraffes even more than me. In fact so much that she dressed up as a giraffe on carnival including painting her entire face and neck yellow with brown spots. I like that kind of enthusiasm, so this is a story for her.

I had told Charlotte from Greenpop before coming to Zambia that she needed to organize me a giraffe. They kept on posting pictures of hippos and owls, but no giraffes, and I told her no giraffe, no me. She finally sent me this and basically told me this was as good as it gets.

Not really all that good, but I appreciated her effort and decided to go and check it out for myself. I do think some people are more apt in giraffe spotting than others.

During the week we saw a herd of 20 elephants by the camp, the usual amount of baboons, hippos, crocs, and one scorpion, glowing in the dark, but alas no giraffe. I tided myself over with plenty of gummy giraffes for breakfast on the bus and got unreasonably excited when we got to one of the schools and found this in a classroom:

By the time the last day came along I had given up on the giraffe quest. Luckily my fellow booze cruiser Katie hadn’t and at some point we were all woken out of our G&T haze by her shouting: Giraffes! That is one clever girl with really good eyes because it took the rest of us minutes to spot them, meanwhile accusing Katie of hallucinating. She wasn’t. There they were: not one, not two, but a whole family including a little one.

I don't think we can be entirely faulted for doubting Katie - I think they are

damn hard to spot!

Unfortunately my camera was ill equipped to shoot them from the distance and instead of standing still and making it easier for me, the giraffes decided to do a little sprint along the beach. Mind you that wasn’t their fault, but some idiot’s chasing them with a car.

So if you, Mr. Giraffe Chaser, read this, just know that I think you are an ass and destroyed my probably one and only opportunity of taking a picture of a baby giraffe in the wild!

I should add that we were all still very excited by this. People, including me, were jumping up and down, and I think Kai, the biggest giraffe fan of all, even shed a tear. So thank you, Katie – I think you and your laser vision eyes deserve the title Supergirl!