Kruger Day 7 - Satara Day 3

We were up at 4:45am and queued up to get out of the gate at 5:30am. We were about 12th in the queue but as it was still dark I wasn’t worried about places.
Everybody seemed to turn right out of the gate and except for 2 cars that carried on everybody else turned right again heading to Orpen Camp. Once on that road all of the trucks and cars in front took off easily doing more than 50kph.
I stuck to 40kph poodling along checking the landscape as the light started to get better. Other cars drove around us even when I got up to 50kph in a bushy area. There’s no way they were looking for things. All they wanted was to catch up with the cars in front and hoped they had seen something. All they were doing was driving and whenever somebody stopped, so would they.
We continued on and about 20km later we came to a bunch of cars including 3 of the idiots that had overtaken us all queued down the wrong side of the road.
The left side was still clear so we carried on creeping past everyone slowly and then we saw 2 lions laying in the grass. I pulled infront of the first car and we had the perfect view and got some amazing photos. Once I’d gone past and got my camera out the idiots that were queuing all pulled along side us and the other cars once they realised what we had seen.
The male was trying to mate with the female and when she said no he was roaring just 20 feet away from us, then they turned and walked into the bush.
I moved off driving down the road following a little white car and the moron that had parked next to us just drove alongside us, he was chatting away with his window undone and I could her some girl cackling away laughing.
A gap opened up and I pushed “ little Simba” into it and we got back up to 40kph then the van overtook us and the car infront and shot down the road.
I came to the next junction just a kilometre away from Orpen Camp and decided to do a U turn. Ellie said she wanted a tea but I said I didn’t want to sit in a cafe with any of those people not bothered to put the hours and legwork in game hunting and all of the trucks that had shot off first thing had all driven past the lions because they were going to fast to see.
I set off again at viewing speed, 40kph max and just as we went over the crest of a hill the male and female lion were walking down the road right towards us. There was a queue of cars behind them but they were facing us and we had the best seat in the house. They kept coming so I turned the engine off and stuck my camera out of the window shooting away.
Female first then the huge male they were now just 30 meters away, then 20……..15……..10 meters…………5. “Quick, do the windows up” I said to Ellie and just as I got my window half way up the female lion got to my door brushing past the front of “little Simba”. She was so close if my window was still undone I could have easily touched her. Then the male did exactly the same.
The queue of cars behind slowly trundled by and the first guy gave me a big smile and the thumbs up. That was definitely a moment to remember.
We couldn’t believe how lucky we were, Ellie was beside herself with her mission of seeing lions walking down the road complete, I said I just need to see a leopard to really be happy.
I keep asking God to send me a leopard, he sent me a cheetah, wild dogs, hyena, lions, but still no leopard. He’s just not getting the message.
5km later I came across one game vehicle sitting on a bridge, I crept slowly up to the backside and left blocking the road and I leaned out of the window camera in hand.
The lady at the back said “ There’s a cheetah down there pointing at the dry river bed”
“ No, that’s actually a leopard” I said, and there was my leopard laying down staring straight at my camera in the dry river bed.
30 seconds later he stood up, had a scratch and jumped into the bushes and he was gone.
We had been so lucky, if I hadn’t turned around and we had gone for coffee we wouldn’t have seen the lions, 1 minute later and we wouldn’t have seen the leopard. But thanks to the morons driving fast first thing we had seen everything and mostly on our own.
Now the hunt was on to find them all again!!
We got back to our camp at 9:20am, this morning we had peaked really early. I was shattered so after a coffee I decided to watch something on the kindle for 20 minutes and then have a 30 minute rest. When I got up we wandered over to the shop to get bread, water and milk and use the internet at the side of the restaurant for an hour before heading back to camp to make Wanda toasties for lunch.
At 2pm we decided to grab a 30 minute Power Nap together just to keep ourselves fresh for this afternoons drive. It was much cooler today, just 26°c so it was easier to rest.
Just after 3:30pm we headed back out towards Orpen Camp again, this time we saw huge herds of Zebra and Wilderbeast with their babies, then we saw a large herd of giraffe with babies and then a huge herd of elephants with 3 or 4 babies. Baby elephants look so mischievous running along behind or in the middle of the herd with their little legs while the adults look like they are moving in slow motion.
We got down as far as the bridge where we saw the leopard but we didn’t see him even though we knew he was there somewhere. It was already 10 minutes past turning back time but we had taken a very slow drive down and we headed back home sticking just under the speed limit at 48kph as a squally wind and rain blew through. We got back to camp at 5:50pm.
Back at our tent the wind had dropped off again but it looked like it might do something so we battened down all the windows and doors and then headed to the restaurant for dinner. Fortunately it was quiet again and we got drinks immediately and served our dinner within 20 minutes. We were back in our tent for 7:30pm and with nothing to do we decided to just go straight to bed.Read more