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Trip Report April 2009 – Honeymoon.

Ok so I was reading through everybody’s trip reports and my scrub hares in my head go crazy! I will split this up as a usual diary and then add memorable moments and stories – there are a few. I now booked for December and then added three more nights just because of all of you with the magnificent seven trip reports.

Trip:
Camp Shonga 6-8April – Shesangeni Private concession
Hoyo-Hoyo 9-11 April – Imbali Private concession
Satara 12-13 April – KNP my type of session

Waking up Sunday 5 April from a massive party and a wedding, we knew we were going to leave today, a day early. At 12pm we left Johannesburg traveling to Nelspuit and booked into the Protea hotel and went for dinner. Have you got any idea how your buffalo bum can itch when you are SOOO close to the park and cannot enter?

We left 6am 6 April and stopped over at Melelane for some breakfast at the wimpy, you can almost see the gates from there, “if you drink enough bush coffee”. We entered Malelane gate and traveled towards Skukuza and the made a hard right towards croc-bridge – We saw the usual, Giraffes, Impala, Kudu, Steen bokkies. But most interesting for the morning is, I stop at everything, especially the little Chameleon’s, I stood next to one waddling to get over the road and a big dumb 4X4 came and just about drove over the little one, it was so close the little one’s tail actually scraped the 4X4’s tyre, things like that make me so “De (CENSORED IN AFRIKAANS) in!”.

This ones tail was still burning!

So I ask people when some one stops, make sure that they aren’t watching a dung beetle or a little creature that is on the road and stop chasing after big game, if you stop for the little ones you will see so much more. Anyhow…..

We arrived at Camp Shonga after parking our car at the main camp and driven there. We were just in time for the afternoon game drive. I must admit this is 5star service, when you get off the landy they give you a luke warm face cloth to wipe your face and serve you a little juice. It is a honeymoon after all.

I’ll quickly fill you in on the food, all breakfasts dinners and lunches were just the most awesome, Fillet, gigantic kingklip, potjie and all the rest. To many to mention

Afternoon Drive:
As we left camp we spotted a White Rhino and the guide was able to make rhino sounds to make it come closer, I still remember the days where you might see a rhino in the park, but more rhino stories to come. We landed ourselves in a heard of buffalo, gosh I forgot how they stink. Other than that while the sun was up we saw the usual and more. We then got a call from the main camp that there are two male lions that was having a snack, we got there and they had already chomped the impala and were laying 50m off the road, we only saw the one, or did we? No Elephants so far.

Because these are private concessions, they do stop and people can get off the landy, these spots are “usually” carefully chosen and are “usually” in open areas so you can see what is about to eat you J. We had a beer some peanuts and biltong. More on the chosen spots to come…

We continued with the drive entering darkness and a staff member called in spotting female lions, we were there first and drove alongside them, 4 of them, they got to a heard on Impala and laid down…..The Impala’s did spot them but the ranger explained that as light fades the impala will loose sight of them, we lost sight of them and it wasn’t even 100% dark yet. So we went on. We got a call of mating lions close to where we saw the male lions earlier, we got there and there were two magnificent looking male lions and one girlfriend. But no mating, they lay right next to the road giving us wonderful night shots,

Then it was time for dinner and bed.

Morning Drive:
Next morning 5am I am awake bouncing on the king size bed, wake up wake up, run off to coffee and biscuits and first on the landy…..eeerrrr where is the rest of the people, we had a French dude with his son and a German couple with two boys. 10 minutes later they pitch up, I mean come on its like 6:10 were late!

Memorable Story 1:
So we see the usual impala, buffalo , kudu, rhino etc etc, but today I am telling you a story about how dangerous giraffes are. So we get to a magnificent setting with giraffes next to the road and the guide explains what is the BIG 5 and why are they the BIG 5, for you that don’t know, the BIG 5 are the animals you would not want to run into on foot in the bush IE they are the most dangerous. So the German asks why is the giraffe not on the BIG 5 list, they are big after all. These guides are sharp –

“Sir giraffes are very dangerous, there was only room for 5 Animals and the giraffe didn’t make it” you must see the confusion on this guys face “ Further sir” while the giraffe is eating a tree “ they do hunt in packs and are know to eat humans” promptly the German moved away from the side of landy looking startled. I could not hold my laugh anymore and the tree of us locals – myself, my wife and the guide, burst out laughing, he explained it was a joke and told him the correct story. So everyone started laughing – I then realized that people from overseas that do not watch a lot of Animal Planet ant Nat Geo are rather gullible, the German realized it was all a joke and everyone laughed. - I must apologize for any foreign forum members this joke and a few other stories were in no manner directed to misinform/scare or pick on foreign visitors, the guides always corrected them and in all circumstances the foreigners did have a good laugh with us. We stopped for coffee and biscuits and returned to camp after another few hours.

Continuing we saw more rhino and the regular park animals.

Sunset Drive – Is this one special?
We left camp 3pm and went on our safari as they call them, we had more then enough to see to keep us busy, but now getting frustrated still no ELEPHANTS on the trip, OK maybe one or two far, far away almost in Mozambique. We went around a bend and found 2 rhinos, we continued and saw another one and we continued and got to a rhino family, one big male three females and a calf, ok so we saw more rhino than impala so far. We didn’t see much after this except an huge heard of buffalo close to the main camp again, we left them and a few kilometers we heard the buffalo was heading towards the croc river to drink, we decided to not go have a look.

We get to two giraffes; they were pretty much in love. Now I have seen elephants mate in Addo and that aint romantic, so we were pretty curious on how synchronized these two might get. But nature is nature, we stood there for a good 20 mins, and the gent got stage fright, no one had the magic blue pill and she did look a bit disappointed to say the very least, we left them, for him to regain his long composure and I’m sure a little one is in the oven by now. 10 Minutes later we heard a call the a buffalo was taken by……what over the radio sounded like a lion!. So we turned around heading back and later stopped to listen to the radio chatter, it wasn’t a lion but a crocodile – their “African names” sound very similar, when we arrived the buff was gone, prolly stuck under a log. We still had a few hours to kill so we went for our sundowners and drove a few more hours. Now at this piont I need to lead you into our French guest, this dude was complaining about everything, the bugs, the dust, the drives are too long and it sounded he was having a terrible time.

Morning Drive
We headed towards the Mozambique border for our coffee and biscuits and when we got there, Mr. French guy asked to speak to the guide in private. The guide returned and said something to me about a tracker, I wasn’t listening cuz I was watching the confused German family. They asked the guide something, and he asked me to help cuz, he could not understand the question, I am from German family and do understand very little, so between the German en English the Germans asked “why there was a fence?” – So I took over form the guide explaining the fences are the to separate countries in Africa and to keep people out and animals in. We finished and I asked the guide, what did you say about a tracker, does this dude want to go shoot something? The guide laughed and said well meet at the camp. Returning we saw the most beautiful Kudu bull, right behind a bush right next to the landy, it was a pity only 3 of us saw him. I again realized how attuned our eyes are looking through things and normal things like that are to us, and our visitors find it difficult. – Again no fun made of our visitors but how blatantly stupid I am taking things for granted and realizing how out of comfort and out of their elements some of these people are.

At the camp the manager explained that he was sick and tired of the crickets at night and the “gogga’s” (bugs), he asked for a tracker so that he can go for afternoon runs and the landy must follow him while he runs. They moved him to the main camp where there was a gym and maybe less bugs.

Sunset Drive:
After lunch, tea and biscuits we set off, by now I was asking to see Elephant and Leopard, the guide obliged and took us on a route where they sometimes find leopard. As we are traveling towards the route we hear over the radio they found cheetah, we arrive and there was mommy and her two older cubs, they were almost as big as her. I know how hard it must be to raise little ones but she managed two of them, the two young ones were running and playing and she was keeping watch.
We saw nothing much at all, a few scattered impala, one or two buffalo’s. BUT WAIT…. in the distance my wife sports something, it looks like a moving mountain it was one of the NEW Tuskers or even an old one, I don’t know. It was very far and only showed us the tusks once.

Big Tusker:
I shall attempt to describe the area we were in we were south in the park close to the Mozambique border. The elephant was massive in size and the tusks were thick bulky and pretty straight, the looked like bleached tree stumps, curling in at the bottom. My only bet it could be Gomondwane, as I read this is the only tusker in this part of the park, unfortunately we have no proper shots of him.

Memoreable Story 1
We pass a heard of buffalo and see a calf with half his bum missing. If you look you can also see the teeth marks over his snout.

As described we stop for coffee and biscuits at “safe” spots, as we round a corner we notice a nice table set up, not far from the calf, maybe 20metres, with a white cloth on it, in a open field. WOW that’s not ours, where are the people having coffee?

A few seconds later we see the other game vehicle and they guides start talking. He shows us two young male lions not far from the table and we get some nice shots, one is limping but both with a full tummy.

These people stopped had a look around and started to unpack; the lions were underneath a bush sleeping merely 10 metres from where the table was. Apparently a guest walked over to get is camera when one lion got a fright and stood up, he was first to be back on the van. We all had a chuckle still feeling sorry for the calf. It most certainly would not make it much longer.

Above the ones that got away.

We had our coffee and left.

Memorable Story 2:
We are heading back to camp, towards where we saw the cheetah earlier, then we come across a rhino doing 120KPH. This dude was running, again it was a marvellous site sing this two tonne animal running like that, we still don’t know why. He crossed the main road running towards the river and we stopped, as we can’t bundu bash after it. A few seconds later he started turning left and stopped at a bush. The next moment the rhino bolts to the one side and about 5 lions bolt in the opposite direction, we know both parties are prolly still running today. It was just so funny seeing these lions jump in the air and started running without their feet touching the ground and the fact that the rhino had to stop at a bush lions were sleeping under.

We went for lunch and a snooz – this was however the last time our guide was taking us out as he was leaving for Easter. I can’t remember your name but thanks. The Germans also left and we were joined by a Belgium couple and their son.

Afternoon Drive:
Now to start off we were looking for weak points with our new travel companions and we had a new guide Brandon. But these people were great they asked all sorts of questions and Brandon was very informative and giving them the answers. We again saw rhino, warthog’s impala’s and the rest of the crew. Brandon was very informative regarding insects and I learnt a lot. The drive was boring compared to the others and we headed back to camp early, but Brandon invited us all for a late night drive.

So we chomped our delicious food quickly had a few drinks (too many) and about 8:30 pm he came and picked us up. We left camp traveling on a valley type road to try find the king of darkness. We drove into a heard of buffs again and got stuck in-between them, boy they can stink J. We saw a giant eagle owl – well a juvenile and a few other night birds./

If I am wrong please correct me J, night jar’s bats, “goggos” and had to drive through a few wolf spider webs; I think it was wolf spiders maybe someone can help me here, they build their webs usually over night and eat it the next morning. We did laugh at my wife as we drove trough one she wasn’t expecting it, and she got webbed. Later the evening the moon was almost full and we FINALY got a small heard of ellies, maybe 10 or so. We drove till right next to them and then Brandon asked us to take in the moment and be quite, as he said that he switched off the engine and the lights.
BY GOLLY this was rather scary but hell of a lot of fun, we were next to a small tree and two of them came over to the landy and were right next to us. We could touch them, they were soooo relaxed, and getting a feel for their body language we all relaxed. We could hear their teeth grind the food and the slur of their spit as they opened their mouths to eat. There we sat for 10-20mins. A hippo came walking past during this time, a heard of buffalo’s were also to the other side of the road. Around 11:30 we were back in camp.

NO NO this is not where it stops. We were at the end tent (5star tent) to explain to people there elevated wooden walkways to the tents, the tents are 30m apart and you have your privacy, most important there are NO fences, you are in the bush.

As we lit a smoke, it sounded like something with a bad cough. That deep chest cough. We have no torches to have a look, and way to “cautious” to peek outside, but I know who she was, I know now it was a she. It sounded as if I was right next to us and moving away, we could hear the steps and the grass risle, every now and again not often letting off a cough. I smiled and said to my wife, “the queen just walked by our tent” and we couldn’t see her. We laid our heads on the pillows both with smiles…..
Obviously I can’t sleep and early the next morning 3-4am there is a cough again much, much softer, like she is whispering, this time it was different. There was a tiny reply; I have heard this on TV and boy it sounds right. This only went on for a few mins, I just had enough time to wake up my newly acquired wife so she can hear it. Mommy Leopard and a cub I’m Sure.

At 5 when they wake us up we ran to the main boma and told Brandon about it, he confirmed that the sounds we heard could have come from a leopard and there is a female resident in the area and they have seen her from the decks but not in a few weeks. He did say it was out of character for her to have a cub close to humans, but for now I say it was a leopard mommy and no one is going to burst my bubble on that J

We are still smiling convinced of what we believed to be a leopard.

Last Morning Drive at Camp Shonga:
We left camp early and the Belgium’s were on time We saw again the regular type animals, but two things of the morning drive stood out. We saw a baby, I mean a baby buff, jumping up and down crossing the road and it was sooo cute, almost looked like his feet was on fire and enjoying it. The second thing was the rhinos just would not go away, the morning drive we saw 7 in total – now we have by threefold seen more rhino over the last three days then elephants and impala. We end our morning drive and greet the staff, a marvelous bunch of staff there. Thanks guys.

We left for Hoyo-Hoyo, the direction is basically from Croc Bridge – Lower Sabie for lunch and petrol – Tshokwane and then left towards Orpen on the S36. We did have one moment on the 4 hour drive, there was a rhino being watched by 50 people and we didn’t even stop, and the people are pointing “look, look rhino, not a rock”. Err ya, we were all “rhinoed” out.

We get to Hoyo-Hoyo again just before the sunset drive. They have a resident buffalo there, we called him Max. Again this is open bee hive type rondawels and NO fencing. Here we were not allowed to leave the hut after we go in at night till when they come wake us up in the morning. Shonga the tents were elevated off the ground by about 3 meters so at night you were allowed to sit on you private deck and just listen to the wild orchestra.

Our guide was Elvis – not the dead one. A few quick comments, this dude can spot a scorpion on a tree just with moonlight. He was sharp, just one thing they are use to foreign visitors and chase after animals. Also we met a woman KAY from Britain, she goes to the Kruger once or twice a year for at least two weeks, this time she was there for a month, all in this 5 star expensive accommodation. She was great fun.

Afternoon drive:
Tally is 8 rhino’s for the day so far, so the first animal we see is Max, but he doesn’t count. We got to a river bed and Elvis noticed some lion tracks, fresh ones, we drove on the dry riverbed following these tracks, and as he was following them he would get out and explain how the lions were lying down, jumping and there was cubs as well. This he all read from the tracks and the body marks left in the sand. He then said they let the riverbed here, got out the landy and left us three there. 10minutes later he stalked us and poor KAY got a fright of her life, we saw him coming back from the back but Kay didn’t, he said they moved off. We, for the first time I can remember we saw a side striped jackal and then some ostriches witch was new to the trip, but in a whole very, very little game.

BUT we did see 5 more rhino’s … ppfftt. We stop at a big baobab for beer and biltong and head off again. We are driving in some forest area and the moon’s light isn’t very sharp, all of a sudden Elvis braked and says, look, look, in that tree next to the landy, about 10m away. HUH?? I see nothing; I’m looking for owls, leopards, bats civet’s, genets, and night stuff like that. He says I must look nice, then he explains in the knot of the tree, the black spot sticking out is a scorpion, dude I cant see that, I took a high res shot and this is how it looks, it looks like a scorpion. I didn’t see the scorpion till I saw this on my PC.

We drove and drove trying to find some cats but nothing, we returned to camp and had dinner with KAY and getting to know this very entertaining woman. BTW My wife and Elvis was having sport the chameleons at night competition, Elvis always won by one, but I know he saw more, my wife was pretty good at this, they almost glow neon green at night when you torch on them.

After dinner we sat on the deck exchanging some very memorable stories of yesteryear and how things have changed, and what the bush means to us.

Morning drive:
So we travel pretty much on the same perimeter road, this road splits Miyaneti, Sabi Sabi and the KNP, OH lookie more rhinos, I then took out a computer to calculate how many rhino’s we have seen in 3 safari trips, during the honeymoon, the answer the computer gave me was 19 on two morning drives and a afternoon drive and we have seen something like 28 in total in three days and a morning. Traveling on the gravel road Elvis slammed on the brakes and gets out, he says “look lions”,

“eerr HUH???” “There were lions here last night, they were hunting and then came to rest here, they were not successful, their tummy’s are still empty” “DUDE how can you possibly know that?” so he asked me to get off the landy and showed me some tricks, and true as zebra has stripes, he showed me in the gravel painting how things are. He actually laid on the ground and said this is a male and he was lying like this and these indentations here is his belly, then he drew a lines and said if they had eaten this is how it should look like. Now I don’t know what to make of this dude. So he says, “its hot now, they are lying somewhere in the bush here, well come back in the afternoon and well track them, well follow this donga they won’t be far and they wont move”. Now I know we are all laughing at me here cuz I am so confused I don’t know if this dude is lying to me, though I could see how the ground was marked and at places can see claw marks.

We didn’t see much after but confused we headed back for camp.

Afternoon Drive:
Ok so the plan is to go find the lions, so Elvis calls his best buddy, to track the lions on foot. We arrive at the spot first with buddy coming in a close second, both the guides pop out the landy’s and disappear into the bush. Another vehicle arrives and they suppose to baby sit us. KAY knows all these guides by name and being a brit the guide asks witch way did they go, she points in a totally different direction and the guide disappears. She says “Well I recon if we split them up the chances will be better to find cool things” We all burst out laughing, the last guide comes back looks at Kay, realizing she sent him in the wrong direction, he came back quickly as he could not find any human tracks.

The next moment the other two come running out of the bush waving their arms, nothing followed them witch was in a small sense a relief. We start to follow the donga, making sure we don’t trample on anything and then 1km from the main road we find these:

16 lions in total we saw, the two males ran away apparently, these are the Hamilton’s Pride. We follow them back to the road as this is where they were heading and leave them in peace. We counted about 6 cubs of about a year old, so these ones must kill often.

Being a South African, everyone is in competition; we were that afternoon joined by more South Africans so our camp used two vehicles. Unfortunately they went in the wrong direction. So at dinner we laughed as they saw a kudu, giraffe and impala.

Morning Drive:
Now for some reason we go to Orpen to go find cheetahs, they leave in a different direction, that morning we saw Lions on the tar road between Orpen and Satara, Elephant, Rhino and a few other things, oh and a black backed jackal. They come back and saw just about nothing, we smiled.

Lunch things were heating up and a proper competition. We set off for the afternoon drive, We head towards Tshokwane and find rhino’s and a lot of small game, duiker, impala, kudu, giraffe etc. But no cats. We did find Two Hyena cubs on the Tshokwane road towards Satara, we stopped for out sunset drink and biltong and I find old poop, surely this is odd looking, the guide says its lion poop and even dissects it and pulls out bones and stuff, I found that interesting. Later we find a 3 elephants at night, there was a short one but with massive tusks again, unfortunately I haven’t figured out how to use the night shot on my camera or video camera – witch will bite me on the bum, SOON.

We get back to camp and the others arrive with big smiles, they found a leopard, now things like that annoy me. They bask in the limelight and tell us what a beautiful sight it was, he was walking in front of the car for a good couple of minutes.

We sit down to eat and as we finish our main course I start to wrestle with my camera trying to figure out how this thing makes pretty pictures at night. Then the camp manager strolls towards us and says everyone must keep quite there is a surprise on the opposite riverbed at the waterhole. I find the night shot button but the wrong one.

WHHOOPEE I LIKE SURPRISES.
There we saw the biggest magnificent male leopard drinking, I toss the video camera to my wife and I try..yes try to take a picture. And this is it :(

I look at my wife and she keeps complaining she can’t see anything, she points the video camera at me, and the lens cover was on……. SIGH, 5 minutes of black video, and voices. But the sight of him will stay in my brain for a long long time :)

At least we have also seen leopard the same night as the other group so we had bragging rights.

Last Morning Drive:
We wake up and head off, we see Max again and a few other critters, a few suicidal guinea fowl and some Rhino’s again. This time it was cool, this was a crash of 6 Rhino:

3 of the 6, beautiful animals.

We leave them as soon as a call comes in for a leopard sighting, we weren’t far and say cheers to the crash. We drove for about 5mins and got to the other vehicle, where my next moment starts.

Memorable Moment:
We get there and we see nothing, the guide explained she is in the grass next to our land rover, we literally look down onto her back, she was hunting. There were two impala males not more than 5 meters from her, barking alarm calls. The whole veld lit up with alarm calls, just shows you how many animals there are that you just can’t see. She was getting closer and closer, we have the cameras ready and the video camera is rolling. I have never seen a kill before, never alone seen a leopard hunt and being so close. The next thing, “I saw was her jumping on the ram, wrestling him to the ground and ending his life, maintaining hers”. DOH just my imagination, I took this picture, she was no more than 3 meters from the ram.

Ok wait: There was a thread on the forum, Spot the animal, can you see her?

The ram is now towards the left of the picture, his buddy ran over to another side of a bush but still close. She is in the above picture blocked by a thicket of grass, shell need to get around it to get to the ram. They keep barking, edging closer to her, one is facing her but can not see her…she is dead still, patient and waiting for her opportunity…The ram slowly looks to the left and she takes this opportunity to curl around the bush blocking her path. The rams scatter

……To Be Continued!

Here is a close up of the shot at the top here, maybe this will help?

You can just just make out there are spots in there that are not the same as the grass, she is flat on her belly.

Download the high res image if the cat.

Continued…..
Ok so the rams ran away and she got up and walked off L. I would post the video but we were burgled a month back and they stole the camera with that video in it :(

The above impala was the one what got away, the leopard is to the right bottom of the picture out of shot almost under that dead branch.

We were all shaking, we left the scene and headed towards the hyenas again, I got these wonderful shots of the one cubs.

Close up of the eye shows our land rover J.

We got back to camp and packed up. After lunch we set off to my favorite camp, Satara.

We got there and booked in and went for the normal triangle dam visits, we saw nice herds of Zebra and wildebeest and loads of giraffe and other antelope. We were now in a car and couldn’t not see far.

We had some dinner at the cafeteria took our juice and sat at the Satara cam watching the same waterhole as you guys. A hayena came strolling past the fence witch gave us a massive fright, as we didn’t even hear it approach, a few mins later another one was drinking at the water hole. We went to bed .

Next morning we drove north via the S100 – now there is a lot of speculation this road is dead…well it wasn’t. As we entered the road we got a few buffalo’s, and further on there were cars. We got to the cars and saw a few female lions lying in the grass, but no good shots as we were a bit short and the grass long. We left them quickly and found this interesting impala:

White furry impala ram.

We drove on and saw another two 4X4s, and a 100m or so a massive lion was approaching us. My dad always taught us if something is approaching you stop and wait, and that is what we did. The big boy was on the move towards us and by now everyone that passed us was making U-Turns passing us again. Luckily he decided to make a pee-pee onto a bush close to where we were and sat for a bit, we were in the perfect spot.

We left him to go find more.
At the end of the S100 you find that dam, witch surprisingly was empty, but we did find number 3 for the morning, a big elephant. We then drove up on the S40 and then on the S90 we then got to a herd of buffalo with this fellow posing, what a nice shot.

Buffalo after a bath…

We got to the H1-4 tar road and found a car sitting there, we knew that there was something there, but everyone was passing them. We got to them and they smiled, we grabbed the “far looker near bringers” and my wife got a massive fright when a lion walked right past her, she kinda forgot she was looking through the nocks. We scanned the area and found 4 female lionesses with their tummies stacked to capacity with a fully eaten wildebeest, there was another dead one untouched.

This reminded me of a nat geo program where wildebeest can get a bit DOF (dumb) and I think this one was harassing them and they caught that one aswell. A fifth lioness was chasing after wildebeest the whole time, as they got closer and harassing the other 4. We left towards timbavati, we crossed a bridge and there were two rhino’s a mommy and a baby, that was 4 of the 5 for the morning, we stopped and told other people there were lions a few Km back, we left for breakfast at timbavati. By now we were sick of bacon and eggs, so we ripped out our biscuits and cheez and had some breakfast.

We went to camp for a snooz and then out for the afternoon drive, on the S40 we saw a car and they said there was a cheetah, unfortunately we could not see anything as it had moved off. We relaxed at the dams and saw a few herbivores. We went back to camp for our night drive. Night Drive was really really shocking, It use to be very good, we stopped at buffalo’s right outside the gate witch has been there for the whole day, we sat there for 10 minutes, the guide was saying nothing it actually looked like he was either sleeping or very close to it. We eventually left and drive on the H1-4 north, we kept on shouting stop when we saw something and we did, this dude just wasn’t hearing anything or was way too late. I’m not going to go on. We saw genet, jackal owls, night jar, all on the move.

The next morning we were leaving KNP, I decided I’m making this a long trip so from Satara we are going out at Skukuza and not Orpen. We left early and got to our fist spotted cat:

A great sighting of a Cerval.

A few km in low light something was walking towards us, I yelled leopard, we scrambled for the camera, as the leopard walked towards us, I had stopped by this time. The leopard turned towards the river, and turned into a hyena ..DOH!!

We passes Tshokwane heading towars Skukuza, when after 8 days we saw our first proper herd of elephant, we sat there for 10 minutes watching a baby play, this one was so tiny.

We got to a car on the H1-2 and said there as a lioness with cubs in the riverbed. We looked and there she was, perfect condition, maybe a bit hungry but with the cutest little ones. She kept looking up and I told my wife she is going to come up here. 2 minutes later we lost sight of her but the bush alarms were ringing, se popped up just before our car and followed the road, we drove after her for a good km, one little bugger was getting tired:

”AAAGGGG SHAME” comes to mind.

The 4 hours drive down from Satara this was worth it!

We ate late breakfast at Skukuza and left for Johannesburg. I thank the big man upstairs for the great sightings we had and the best Kruger trip ever, hence a trip report of 27 pages.

Here are some other shots:

Another colored one