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Went out early, drove up to Afsaal to check (again) if the hyena had not come back. No joy.

But we did spot the morning drive vehicle parked in one spot for too long. So we went to investigate.

One, maybe two lions, quite far off in the bushes. We were not there long before they left, direction Afsaal.

Saw a large herd of buffalo on our way back to camp, this one had a nasty gash on the back.

Packed up the camp, found two scorpions under Philip’s tent. Big pinchers mean (relatively) harmless, right?

Right.

Looks like we had famous people in camp.

We drove out on the S114 and found the leopard in the tree that Tanya’s been looking for.

Some people get very excited…

(I won’t bore you with the rest of the 5 gazillion photographs)

These guys were just fooling around a bit.

We headed back to camp late the afternoon, as you can see the shadows are getting long.

Philip and I are both geeks, and we were discussing Venn diagrams on the walkie-talkies when Tanya goes “There’s a FSCKING LEOPARD NEXT TO THE ROAD!”

And so there was.

We ended up being ten minutes late at Berg-en-Dal gate, but the gate was still open and nobody gave us grief. If I’d known that we would have spent more time with the leopard.

Jessica wanted to go to the book store in Sabie, I had a slow leak in the new tyre and wanted to get it fixed in Hazyview, and I felt like some Sabie beer. So we headed off early, H3 and H2-2 Voortrekker Road to Pretoriuskop, get out of Kruger after 9 when everything’s asleep, get back around 4, drive back to Berg-en-Dal while looking out for leopards and lion.

Sounds like a plan.

What have they got?

Wild doggies!

Who then proceeded to flush a pumba which ran straight at our car, veered at the last moment, and stuck his backside in a culvert under the road.

This is a pic I got later, when he ventured out and got chased back in again.

Nobody messes with a pumba with his back in a culvert and his sharp end facing you. The dogs were so frustrated they were biting the ground and pulling sticks around.

Not coming out the other side either.

Too close. A little too close.

Beer (and lunch) at the Sabie Brewing Company (got the slow leak sorted. It was a puncture in my brand new tyre).

There’s always some horse’s arse who spoils your shot.

Found a hyena with cubs in the culvers just before Afsaal. Thought it might be a den but we went back a number of times and didn’t see them again.

The night drive didn’t yield much, we saw a few owls and a mongoose of some type, as well as rhino, buffalo and impala. I can however report that the radio in the vehicle is an Icom IC-F5063 (I’m presuming VHF based on the antenna size).