Another fantastic drive..




So following on from our brilliant drive with the ellies this morning, we switched over and I was on the predator drive in the afternoon. The others had had great sightings of them in the morning so I was really hopeful that we would see lion, cheetah and the ever elusive leopard.


We heard the North Pride were on a kill so headed straight over there, didn't take Anton long to find them. And a very sad looking Warthog mum and one piglet stood not too far away, who I guess had just lost a family member. The piglet was just a snack though, they had an impala kill too.


 I know a lot of people don't like this part of nature, but its what I love about Africa. Everything has such a clearly defined place and purpose, everything is useful in some way and has an important role to play in keeping life ticking over. Don't get me wrong, its really sad to see a poor little bokkie get taken, but then you look at the beautiful lion cubs and you want them to survive too.




I'll start with a really cute pic of some very full tummies...

We were right by the fence line and she had spotted a guy who had gotten out of his car on the other side of the fence (outside the reserve) who was talking on his phone. She proceeded to stalk him for a bit and then must have decided an impala and a wartie were enough for her lay down. See, golden rule no. 1, don't break the line of the vehicle! She paid no attention to us sat in the vehicle about 5-10m away but was very interested in the guy outside the car!

Look away now if you are a bit squeamish....

Makes you think twice about having ribs for dinner!

And my personal favourite..

*sigh* Its so hard being an adorable lion cub

We left them after a while and came across Thulani, one of the other big bulls at Thanda, he was just chilling out on his own at a waterhole. He did try and show of for us a bit though by pushing down a tree...

Thulani

We then saw the group of 7 white rhino that we had seen hanging out together quite a few times.
I'm not supposed to put any pics of the rhinos up, poaching is a huge problem in Africa, there have already been 52 rhino killed just this year, so they don't like to advertise where & how many rhino are about. You'll have to take my word for it that we saw them!!

And on the way back to camp, we came across the cheetah brothers, yay! They were just lying in the grass, apparently there was talk the cheetah brothers had made the impala kill and the lions had stolen it from them. At least the cheetah's looked quite full so hopefully they got a good feed before they lost their dinner!

One of the cheetah brothers.

Then it was back to camp to pack for our trip to Pongola. 4 of us from the research team were heading to Pongola Nature Reserve for a 2 day camping trip. Really looking forward to it, though we are only the 2nd group of volunteers to go and when the others went 2 weeks previous they got really bad rain, so fingers crossed for better weather for us!