Wow!!  Thank you everyone for your incredible response to my Part 1 blog post from my trip to Africa 😀

Click here to check out Part 1 in case you missed it!

Here’s Part 2, with some of the photos I took in Zimbabwe at Singita Pamushana, which was a lush paradise chock full of the most gorgeous animals ever.  Each morning’s sunrise had me (a notorious night owl who is most definitely NOT a morning person) jumping out of bed to grab my camera with a huge smile on my face!  The sunsets were equally breathtaking, and the incredible acts we witnessed by animals will never escape my memory.  We witnesses young male lions snatch a baby wildebeest away from its mother and heard the crunch of the bones as they devoured their kill.  Luckily there were some laughs as well, such as when the baby elephant tried to intimidate our safari jeep by charging us, stopping in its tracks after all 8 of us laughed at how adorable it looked.  Unfortunately we embarrassed the elephant who ran off to its mother nearby, hiding between her legs.  We spent hours one morning watching a herd of at least 50 elephants bathing themselves in a watering hole, having a ball as they covered themselves with mud and then washed it away.  These elephants were completely oblivious to us, not more than 10 feet away from the watering hole, and it was one of my favorite moments of the trip!  The animals and scenery here were all beyond beautiful; I felt as though I were in a fairytale.  Another highlight from Zimbabwe was witnessing an actual real-life National Geographic photographer filming a documentary with a pride of lions we were also photographing from across the valley.  We also got to go for a short hike to get up close and personal with incredibly detailed rock paintings that were over 2,000 years old!!!  As an art historian, I was in heaven 😀  Our last evening in Zimbabwe, we took a boat trip on the lake to check out some hippos, Africa’s most deadly animal.  They are crazy strange looking up close, resembling prehistoric creatures.  There were a few moments of fear after one or more hippos would disappear underneath the water, and we hoped that it would not reemerge directly under our small boat.  Needless to say we were all happy to make it back to shore safely!  Zimbabwe was truly amazing, and I hope you enjoy some of the photos I took while there:

(All photos are © Colleen Putman Photography.  Please do not save or reproduce any of these photos without written permission from the owner).