Afternoon second day at Mala Mala.

After watching elephant and then zebra and giraffe coming to the water we were heading for two hippo out of the water. Gail said, look there is a leopard! Pretty good spotting for a newbie to the safari experience. The leopard was definitely on the hunt. An eight year old female that is a good hunter and succesfully raised Cubs. In fact the leopard we saw last night was her daughter.

We started following her and called our other vehicles. She was clearly staying under cover but heading straight for the elephants we had been watching. Elephants will charge a leopard but the leopard is so fast she can get away. As she got closer one of the elephants started trumpeting, but they did not charge.
By now there were three vehicles keeping a visual on the leopard. Amazing how she ignored the vehicles completely. She walked right next to the vehicles quite a few times. Then she stopped and started grooming. We left so our fourth vehicle could join in as only three vehicles at a time. The leopard was followed by the other vehicles but did not make a kill.

We headed north to try and find the lion pride with three month old Cubs. We did not find them. However we saw three different rhinos, tons of zebra, wildebeest and ground hornbills, a large bird seldom seen.

Best sighting was a herd of buffalo and a rhino heading straight for each other on a game trail, with the zebras looking on but not moving a muscle. A little bit of excitement as they figured out they were both there but no danger to either animal. The rhino changed course and all was calm. Just so much fun to watch.

Wonderful BOMA dinner tonight in Mala Mala's new boma. Not smokey, you could see what you were eating and the food and entertainment was great.

Only one more full day to go here I will be very sorry to leave.