Today was simply amazing, we were up at 0445 and set off on our Game Drive at 0530. Our first (albeit brief) sighting, was a hyena, literally about five minutes into the drive! We also saw the tracks of a scrub hare, a bird and a dung beetle. Our next (brief) sighting was a steenbok and then a beautiful woodland kingfisher. Next Trevor stopped us at a blue sourplum tree, you can eat the fruit – it’s very sour funnily enough!
Then the Game Drive got really exciting, we began to see fresh lion tracks. We tracked them for quite a while and then got a call on the radio to tell us where they were and that they were static. There were already a few cars in the ‘queue’ to see them, so we stopped for drinks and rusk biscuits before heading on to see them. At our drinks stop we saw monkeys, a cute little squirrel and even a broad billed roller.
We finished our drinks and headed on to the lions, on the way we saw a pair of Verreaux Eagle Owls and an adolescent one too. We also had to pull a tree out of the way, an elephant had recently knocked it down and it was right in the way of the road.
We made it to the lions, there was a young male and a young female. They are so so stunning and we were so close. Such magnificent creatures.
We also saved an upturned tortoise – Trevor stuck his leg out of the car and flipped it back over the right way! Hopefully it’ll be ok! We also saw a dung beetle – I love them so much!
We also saw a temmincks courser (Trevor has never seen one here so he was very excited), some zebra, impala, wildebeest and one giraffe. We got to see the lions again too, from more of a distance but they were walking along and went to the water hole which was cool.
I could never get bored of this scenery.
We drove back to camp and then it was time for brunch – salad, melon, muffins and some sort of ham and egg quiche.
After lunch I studied for a bit, splashed about in the pool and learnt some bird calls. At 1600 it was time for another Game Drive. We went to Pidwa this time. As soon as we got in the gate we saw a brown hyena track and porcupine track – which were quite cool.
We also saw two beautiful African snake eagles, they were sitting on a tree and then they flew off, which was really beautiful to watch. We didn’t really see too much else on this drive, loads of birds (red backed shrike, spectacled mouse bird, dusky indigo bird, magpie shrike, pigtailed whydah, white tailed whistling duck and a fork tailed drone). We also saw a few impala and a kudu.
For quite a lot of the drive we could see a huge thunderstorm just a few miles away. It was almost constant lightning too, both sheet and forked, for several hours. The sky was so beautiful, no pretty sunset like usual, but such dark grey angry clouds.
We drove back to camp and had dinner (chicken curry with rice, sweet potatoes and salad). Jess went to town today (physiotherapy for her back) and asked the group of us that are going on the week off together to go to her hut after dinner. The other day we had been talking about different fizzy drinks we like and she had told us about ‘Tempo’ chocolate bars. She had bought us a ‘Tempo’ bar each and some pineapple fanta, Irn Blu, Creme Soda and some South African ginger beer – so much sugar but so much fun. I then went to bed with the thunderstorm pretty much over head – so much thunder and lightning 🙂 What a fantastic day!