Makanyi morning drive - only one drive left now. What a morning it was. Makanyi has really delivered not a quiet game drive yet. This morning AGAIN THE BIG FIVE plus a super leopard sighting, honey badger, and giant eagle owl very close.

Off we race to the Avoca pride but things started to happen!

THE MALE LEOPARD CUB - highlight of the day.
Yesterday Alfred told us about the male leopard cub and his behavior. The cub likes the vehicles. If you drive by he comes out of the bush to show himself. Always posing and coming close to the vehicles. No reason to drive to him he just comes to you. Sounded very far fetched to me but that is exactly what happened.

The male cub was on a rock when we first saw him. Our vehicle and a land owner’s vehicle were there. He got up and walked to the land owners vehicle, circled the vehicle and looked he was reading Toyota on the back. Then he came to our vehicle inspected our vehicle and sat down close to the side of our vehicle. Then he started stalking and disappeared into a river bed. Alfred said he is stalking something but don’t worry he will come back.

Sure enough the leopard came back very quickly and sat down about 6 feet from our vehicle. The land owner started to leave and the leopard jumped up like saying “don’t leave” and ran to the landowners vehicle. We radioed the land owner that the leopard was behind him, so he stopped his vehicle. Then the leopard stopped and sat in the road between the two vehicles. Felt like his actions meant “ i have you both in sight no one leaves”. Never seen anything like this ever. But the lions were waiting so we did leave.

Then we ran into a very large herd of buffalo. They were on the road and on both sides. There were two rhinos with the buffalo. Next up the honey badger. Pretty good sighting as far as honey badgers go, Ken probably got a good picture.

The Avoca pride had left the watering hole so we tracked them and found them again. They were in a very difficult spot so “off road” we went. As we got close we heard a growl made us all jump. It was the big male lion we nearly ran over him. So we stopped within a few feet of him. He gave us a glare and then settled down quite comfortable with our close proximity.

We viewed the pride for sometime and it was getting close to breakfast. So we left and said elephants please. Of course we found the elephants they were on a mission it appeared to a watering hole moving quite fast. So we went ahead to the water waiting for them but they never came. There was some construction going on so we think that deterred them from their mission.

Back home to fresh baked light scones. Sad to think only one more game drive left.

Been a marvelous safari for both groups.



Honey Badger.