17th – Kitties!

As planned we were woken up at 0500 for a quick snack and tea/coffee/juice before departing on our morning drive half an hour later, slightly delayed. When waking up I thought I heard if still raining like last night but luckily most of the noise turned out to be coming from the ceiling fan. We were still suffering from a slight drizzle, though, but despite it at times turned into real rain it was nothing compared to what we had last night.

Wrapped up in our ponchos and trying to shield my camera equipment by covering it by a corner of the poncho (without being as panicky as yesterday) we were off to find more animals to spot.

Unfortunately, there was not much spectacular to see until we raced along – and kept racing – until we stopped and were told to dismount the car and follow the guide in a single file. After a short 100m walk we – 1 carload at a time – were standing not 5 meters from Kwesi, a cheetah female, with her three cubs. Our presence did not bother them, mainly because we did not smell like feline and we were too big to be edible. She had also been in contact with humans when a cub as part of the cheetah preservation we had been told about yesterday, so that probably also helped on their relaxed state. The purring that was going on in the small group was nothing short of impressive.

Jackal.

Grey go-away-bird.

Lappet-faced vulture.

Cheetah.

When returning to the lodge around 0900 we had breakfast and nothing planned until lunch at 1300 and high tea at 1530 followed by our afternoon/evening drive. Some people just relaxed, some booked spots at the spa and I and a few others spent time in the bird hide overlooking a nearby river. There was only a limited amount of birds (primarily small) and not much else. One could have hoped for hippos or crocodiles (or cats!) but that was not to be. We were graced by the short visit of two female waterbucks, though, but the impressiveness of that was pretty limited.

No luxury at all. Where is the AC??

Wire-tailed swallows.

Blacksmith plover.

Dung beetle.

The afternoon drive was done in dry weather; the rain had stopped and even the blue sky popped its head out occasionally among the otherwise still quite dense clouds. Once again there wasn’t much until we raced across the reserve to see a mal rhine (with an attitude) and having our snack break at a small lake where we saw a group of hippos interacting with each other and some even (play-) fighting. That brought me great joy as I haven’t really seen any of that before.

Adolf showing how big a termite mound can get.

Grumpy rhino.

Black-chested snake eagle.

Rhinos.

Lesser masked weaver.

Darkness came quickly and around 1900 we returned to the lodge where we had dinner half an hour later. Another group arrived; until now we have been the only 15 people here which has been feeling a bit weird considering the fairly large capacity of the lodge.

Sunset.

Tomorrow we will have one last drive in the morning like today but trying to focus more on the southern end of the reserve. The goal is to find elephants but all I can say is “what about the leopards??”.