The first photo was taken at the entrance to Hwange National Park, our fourth and last safari stop. Our new local guide stopped our land rover so we could read the sign and give us some information on the park. But then he asked us if we could identify the animal in the sign. I complained bitterly to our main tour guide that if they wanted us to identify animals, they should show us the animals from the view that we most commonly received. This was an inside joke as I had complained on numerous occasions that when we came upon the animals, they turned around. Our guide would always laugh and tell me that they weren’t being unfriendly or inhospitable, they “were just showing me the African Smile”. So up to now, I’ve shown mostly our good photos. I’ll show you a few in this post of animals that showed us the “African Smile”.

Here’s an elephant that showed us his African smile.

These sable gave us their African smile in unison.

This wildebeest seemed to enjoy giving us his African smile.

This impala gave us his African smile, but then decided to give us another look anyway.