We wondered up to the restaurant for breakfast & sat on the stoep, the electric fence was quite close & just the other side was a waterhole & we enjoyed a slow parade of animals drinking during breakfast. After breakfast whilst it was still cooler we followed the fossil trail that showed the Karoo valley had actually been a lake, there were display cases with different stones & also a number of fossils & pictures of the animals. We then followed the bossie trail but didn’t see much on this walk. We had hoped to do the pointer hiking trail but due to the temperature & hot wind there had only been 1 walk planned for today which was leaving at 7 am so we’d missed it!!
We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the movement of animals towards the waterhole, amazing how enthralling this can be, there was obviously an order to this & occasionally 1 species spooked another species.
We had an early dinner in our cottage (spinach fettuccine bolognese, the fettuccine was a vibrant green colour) before heading to reception for an evening game drive in an open vehicle. By this stage it was really windy, a cooler wind, which wasn’t so good for animal viewing. We went a while without seeing anything except a few Red Hartebeast of which we’d seen lots during the day, we then spotted a pig which was an imposters & shouldn’t have been in the park & some rabbits (which should be in the park). Our guide was a park ranger & obviously really passionate about conservation, there are approximately 16 lions in the park but we didn’t see any, they were reintroduced in 2010.

He told us about the 3 year old male lion who escaped out of the park 1 weekend in 2016 (this was actually his 2nd escape) who the media called Sylvester, after his 1 st escape he was fitted with a tracking device. After his 2nd escape he was moved to the Addo Elephant National Park.
A large spotlight was used to try & “spot” animals & I managed to get a couple of pictures of an ostrich before it ran away, we also spotted a steenbok (you can see it’s eyes & outline in the photo) & then we saw a brown hyena, which our guide said we were very lucky to see (it’s worth 10 points on the animal sighting game, a lion only being worth 8), it had been February last year since one was last seen.
The animals we saw at The Karoo include:
Steenbok
Red Hartebeest
Ostrich
Tortoise
Springbok
Mountain Zebra
Brown Hyena
Eland
Gemsbok
Kudu
Klipspringer
You also forget how beautiful the night sky is when there’s little light pollution- amazing.