All this before elephants

The unpredictability of nature was once again proven on my recent safari. We entered the park at Kruger gate and were straight away rewarded with 2 male lions. They recently finished off a kill with only the bones remaining. The one lion was so full its belly didn’t even leave the ground as it struggled to turn around for a better position. We heard of a leopard sleeping somewhere and decided to follow up on it. On the way, we spotted another leopard moving through the bush, but quickly disappeared into the bush. We reached the sleeping leopard, but could not see anything as it was hiding in the tall grass. Every now and then we saw the grass move as he flicked his tail, but we could not actually see the animal. We decided to wait as it was starting to cool down in the afternoon and hoped it would get up. After 45 minutes we were rewarded. It emerged from the bush and out came a leopard much larger than we expected. Even more rewarding was that it came to drink from some water not far from the road giving us exceptional views. The following morning the warm road had two sleeping lionesses and 3 hyenas trotting along. After a morning walk through the bush where we glimpsed a rhino, we came along 7 wild dogs hunting. They showed some interest in a klipspringer, but this little antelope manage to run higher up into the rocks and escape the dogs. After following them for some 45 minutes we realised they were not going to be successful this morning and left them. We only saw an elephant on the afternoon of the second day. I was so surprised that we saw all these exciting animals even before we saw an elephant. I’ve been very fortunate with elephants this year and have seen them on almost every day, so to go so long without seeing even a single one was very unusual. This was a great start to a bumper safari which later produced more leopard, lion and cheetahs.

 

Simon Vegter

Wild Wings Safaris

www.wild-wings.co.za