Our door was knocked at 5am & we got dressed & headed across to the restaurant for a cup of tea & coffee before hopping back into the Jeep. We’d rotated places, Richard & I sat in the back the night before & this morning sat in the front. We headed off & quickly spotted a hyena just near the air strip & not long after a mother & her calf elephant, & then encountered 2 male elephants, not together but during the drive. Both these males did show us their size & Shaun had to drive us backwards a couple of times but we felt confident that Shaun & our ranger / tracker Thomas were monitoring the behaviour of the elephants (they have all the animals) to ensure the animal doesn’t get stressed & we are safe. Richard was keen to see wild dogs & we did pick up tracks, the 1st time in a number of weeks our guide said, so off we went, we even dropped our tracker off so he could “go bush” but unfortunately no luck. We stopped & were allowed out of the Jeep for a stretch, toilet break & Shaun made a drink, tea, coffee or hot chocolate with a flap jack. We then returned to the Jeep & headed off to pick up our tracker. Shaun said the dogs were really hard to find, they move really quickly & are well camouflaged. We returned to the lodge about 9.30 for breakfast, which was a buffet & hot plated, I had the special of corn fritters with bacon & roasted tomatoes which was really nice. We returned to our room & relaxed & then wondered to the gym, only 1 treadmill was working so I used the cross trainer. We then showered, Richard used the outside shower & about 1pm we headed for lunch, buffet, Richard had some Kessler & I had salad, with lemon tart for dessert. We headed back to our lodge & laid down & napped for a while.
We headed back to the restaurant for a cup of tea & chocolate cake (we shared & still couldn’t finish a thin slice, even though it was delicious). We then boarded the Jeep & set off in search of leopards. We were searching for a female & her 2 cubs. We spotted the mother & daughter elephants & I managed to get some photos of them at a water hole, cooling off. We drove for a long time leopard spotting with no luck, as we came back onto the more open area, we noticed a number of vultures & other birds in trees around 1 spot. Our guide Shaun & Thomas the tracker went to investigate, we were told not to leave the Jeep, & if we needed them which channel on the radio we should use, the Jeep was parked in the shade, Shaun loaded the rifle, which is carried at all times & they headed off. There wasn’t too much chatter in the Jeep although someone did ask what do we do if we hear a gunshot. They returned in about 10 mins & said they hadn’t found anything. Not sure if they had whether they would have told us. Shaun regularly radios in our locations. There was a full moon last night & Shaun had said they are always a bit wary after a full moon in relation to poachers.
We headed off towards a large waterhole & encountered a large herd of buffalos wallowing in the water & also the mud, Richard thought this looked like great fun & it was a pity he wasn’t allowed out of the Jeep!!! Shaun wondered if this was why there were so many vultures & other birds of prey around as they were following the buffalos. There were also a number of flocks of birds, we watched them taking off in waves & they made quite a noise.
As we’d had no luck locating the female leopards we headed to the spot her cubs had last been seen & luckily they were still in the area & we spotted them. We spent some time watching them & then headed off to a clearing for a celebratory drink, Richard had a G&T & I had a glass of wine, what a great setting, watching the sun set & the impalas prancing in the later afternoon sun. On our return we spotted a bushbaby (I used to have a china figurine of a bushbaby) & also a chameleon but it was too late to take photos, the Jeep started to make a strange noise, they thought stones were caught in the wheels, Shaun drove us backwards up the runway which stopped the noise & was fun, 2 planes were on the runway, a SA links plane which had hyena cages around its tires as the hyenas have been known to chew them, & a smaller plane of a regular guest who is a pilot who lives in Dubai, I’d heard a plane earlier in the day circling, which was him, he was circling trying to get the impalas off the runway but had to ring the lodge in the end to send rangers down to clear them.
We returned back for dinner at about 8.30pm & again were sat outside but in a different courtyard. Back to tables of 2’s, there was a dessert trolley but for some reason it didn’t come to us, we had creme caramels but not all the “trimmings” that the trolley offered.
We returned to our room, very tired but we’d had a fantastic day.
The photos below are sunset from yesterday & sunrise from today.