I’m up at 5am and ready for the drive at 6am. It’s a bloody miracle! The sunrise makes it worthwhile, unlike the one we had in Angkor Wat! It’s cool and windy on these morning and night trips and I need my wool hoodie and the big blankets the lodge has supplied us all. Cosy in there. But it’s still 30 and stinking hot in the day.
First we see a pair of black back hyenas with evidence of a kill, blood around but all evidence eaten! Then a pair of healthy jackals, a huge (100+) herd of Cape Buffalo, with their horns which are impenetrable by bullets apparently. Little black watt led starling pair for life, as do many of the birds and animals here. Others mate spuriously and take their chances on their own afterwards! A black rhino, a flock of gorgeous European bee eaters then coffee break under the crags of a small mountain range. Pale chanting goshawks come to visit.
Back at 10am, we can charge camera batteries from the solar power in the afternoons.
AFter our shower and rest in the afternoon, lunch at 2:30pm we are off again on the 4pm drive. A bunch of mongooses are fleeing at a distance. Two big buffalo face off at the waterhole and after a 2.5 hour track through the bush, track team Jonny, Gavin and Cornelius find 4 female lions with their recent kudu kill. You can heater them unchin on the bones, we are so close. It is interesting to watch the body language and interaction of the two females and their daughters and the packing order for eating. We watch fascinated as colorful butterflies land on the stomach contents to obtain moisture and are amazed at the bones piled neatly together. They will be totally consumed later by the hyenas who are the most efficient scavenger in the world. The skull has been cleaned ad reveals it is a female kudu with no horns.
I am so excited by all this I may have confused my drives and waht we saw. Who cares!
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