I was planning to pick up some toys in Witbank, so the original plan was to spend half the day in Kruger, then sleep over in Witbank, visit Classic Arms first thing in the morning, and drive down to Cape Town, with time left to sleep over somewhere if needed.

But as I said, ons was uitgekuier, so we left Numbi gate at around five and got to Witbank at 11:00 or so. Hit the road, Bloemfontein around 15:00, Laingsburg at 01:00 (what a cluster, taxis and cars and busses all heading to the Eastern Cape). Other side of the tunnel I just couldn’t go any more so Tanya drove the last stretch home, got here around 04:30 Saturday morning. Just about 24 hours on the road, of which Tanya did two stretches.

4878 km at an average of 6.9 litres / 100km. But the teardrop lefthand tyre is worn down completely, which means there’s something wrong. I’ll have to take the axle in to have it checked out, even with the Namibia trip and a bunch of smaller excursions there can’t be much more than 15k on these tyres and they were new when I started.

Another shitty day in Africa.

We couldn’t get decent photographs of the sable on the night drive, so I figured we can head out that way, see if we can find them.

But there was a traffic jam just outside the gate.

A leopard, and we see it’s moving SW-ish so I reverse and go down the other road, got some nice pics.

Optimistically contemplating breakfast.

We’d seen enough (Tanya had taken more than 170 photographs at this point) so we tell some newly arrived people where to look and they say “there’s another one in a tree around the corner” so there we go.

Yup, it’s there all right.

She (I’m guessing she, because I don’t see two males sharing territory like this) got out of the tree and walked into the bushes.

I managed to get through the road block and we headed off.

Didn’t see the sable we were looking for, continued on to the S1 because I remember there being a family of hyena living in a culvert somewhere, but looks like they’ve moved.

So we ended up back at Satara (hey they make good milkshakes).

Turtles on a rock.

That’s no rock!

All right, what have we here?

Spent a while getting into position (some people just ram in, me, I’m polite. Still seem to get to see everything, without pissing people off).

Got back to Pretoriuskop and there was no water. What a mess.

We decided to go for an afternoon drive around Fayi loop, maybe our leopards from this morning is in the vicinity. Got close to where we’d seen them, and yes, there’s a whole lot of cars. I start scanning the trees, trying to find out where the leopard is — Turns out there’s a lion, two actually, right next to the road, I’m looking way too far away.

My original plan was to spend as much time in the park as possible. This would be a morning drive tomorrow, then hook the teardrop and drive down to Malelane gate, maybe after lunch at Berg-en-Dal. But by now we’d had enough, and seriously, things couldn’t really get better. And also, there was the water issue.

So we decided that if there was still no water in camp we hook the teardrop and get out Numbi before it closes, go back to Nelspruit. If there is water (there was) we head back early the next morning. So we got ready to leave.

Three leopard, two lion.

By now we were a bit clapped out, so we got up late, did laundry, hooked the teardrop (I only booked one night at Skukuza), and headed off to Pretoriuskop.

And we saw rhino. Plenty rhino.

When we got to Pretoriuskop (which is tiny) we abandoned the teardrop under a tree and headed off down Voortrekker Road. , where we saw a lone tsessebe (well, with a bunch of impala, but only one tsessebe).

These guys are rare, to the point where there’s a register in the camp office where you can note down sightings (Hartbees and tsessebe, sable and roan, and reedbuck).

We also saw two sable on the night drive, around the Shabeni loop. Pretoriuskop is well suited for night drives because of all the loops around the area, it’s a nice drive but sightings wise it was rather disappointing.

Seven rhino, two sable, one tsessebe. In all fairness it’s difficult to improve on the earlier parts of this trip.

For our early drive I chose the H-7, S-36, S-126 route in the hope that the cheetah had ended up somewhere around there. This road circles a hunk of land about 200 square kilometers in size, so your chances are slim, maar nou ja. Did spot a tiny zebra though. And one of the lionesses from the waterbuck kill, in the riverbed under the road just south of Satara.

Zebra crossing (yea, I know).

Hooked the teardrop, headed south to Skukuza. Ran into the normal traffic jam, asked someone who told us there’s a male lion under a bush. Not too exciting for us, we’d seen plenty lions from much closer.

Squirrels at Tshokwane.

Ran into another traffic jam. Turns out there were two cheetah under a tree, 130 / 150-ish metres into the bush. This is as much as one often gets to see, we were extremely fortunate with our earlier sighting (there are not many more than 200 cheetah in the whole Kruger, although they are behind with the census taking, since they’re using the resources to fight poaching).

Three rhino, mommy daddy and baby, crossed the road and walked off. Couldn’t get all three of them in the same frame though.

And here we are, parked off at Skukuza.

On the night drive we saw a pack of wild dogs. Fifteen or so of them. This is a first for me.

One lion, three rhino, two cheetah and one pack of wild dogs.

Some people make a point of being at the gate at 04:30, to be the first out. Problem is, it’s still dark. But we woke up early, so we ended up tenth or so in the queue. I think there were at least five cars ahead of us on the S-100 (the other half went down the H1-3,  presumably to check up on the lions). We took it slowly (second gear on the Golf gives 20km/h or so at idle), looked around a lot, saw a few sleepy impala and the like.

When we eventually caught up with someone  it was just one car — we figure the other cars passed straight by the two lionesses sleeping next to the road.

Must have been a hard night.

So we sat there waiting for them to wake up, which they eventually did.

Came back via the H6, spotted three juvenile, or at least young-ish, hyena.

Apparently there’s a pack of hyena who live in that area.

Nice tusks.

Back on the H1-3 the lions were still there, three lionesses.

One went into the bushes, there was a snarling, and a bunch of cubs jumped out. Turns out daddy was nomming on the waterbuck behind the bush.

Just like our cats at home these guys seem to sleep all day.

Some excitement…

Naaah, bugrit.

We sat watching them for quite some time. The little ones woke up and went to get more food, then daddy came out.

Quick loo break at Satara and took the H7 (we heard there was a white lion cub somewhere around Nsemani dam, didn’t spot it) and the Timbavati Road (aside: the dirt roads are corrugated like crazy. Some maintenance required. Seriously, it spoils the fun if your car is disintegrating around you) to Olifants. Spotted ground hornbill and some vultures on a kill, no idea what the kill was though. Saw baby baby elephant and hippo out of the water, not something I’ve seen in daytime before.

(All together now “Ag Shame!“)

Saddle billed stork, pied kingfishers, egyptian goose.

More baby warthog.

On the way back on the H1-4 “Why are they stopped?”. Three cheetah, under a bush, about 7km north of Satara.

We needed a loo break, so we went to Satara, checked to see if the lion were still there (the male was sleeping, looked like the rest had moved on) and went back to see the cheetah get up and walk off direction roughly Girivana.

So we went back to camp and had some Amarula.

Ten lion (eight new, since we saw two of them yesterday already), three cheetah. First day with no rhino.