Mata Mata Day 4

Getting up at 4:45am was getting tedious now but we did want to have the best chance of seeing predators and at 5:30pm we rolled out of the gate. It doesn’t seem to matter the gap that you leave with because whatever cars are coming behind always think they are going to miss something if they don’t catch the car in front.
15km down I was already being pushed along by a couple of muppets and I pulled off onto a little loop road to let them pass and just as we rejoined we saw 2 Jackal harassing a big male lion walking down the road right in front of us. We would have been first in the queue had I not pulled off and I was annoyed but the lead car pulled in front of the lion got there pictures and then drove off. The second car wasn’t quite so polite as he kept stopping and blocking the road but once he’d got his shots he did move on. Then it was our turn and Ellie was in the bag videoing while I was hanging out of the drivers window with my camera with a huge male lion right next to us. It was incredible.
We moved in and drove the furthest down that we had ever been from Mata Mata and at the Nossob junction and picnic site we saw 3 hyena. This is where we turned around to head back and it was now 8:45am.
We stopped at the 13th watering hole to eat breakfast and on the exit road we bumped into a guy that told us there were 2 cheetah up from the 14th watering hole so we put our foot down and drove there.
We found the 2 cheetah males sheltering from the sun under a tree and we couldn’t really get good photos so we only stopped for a few minutes.
Another 5 kilometres towards home there was a big queue of cars and they said it was the male lion up in a ridge. Now it was so far away it could have been a rock so we drove on glad we had left early to see it under a meter away. Then another 5 kilometres towards home there were more queueing cars and this time it was the 4 cheetah we had seen yesterday under a bush and miles away. Again we drove on as you couldn’t really see them.
We got back to camp at 11am had a quick nap and then both had showers. It was so hot Ellie’s hair was almost completely dry by the time she got back to the caravan. 37°c in the shade with a wind so hot it feels like a hairdryer. Then we had ice creams before we moved our chairs to the shade and chilled in camp for the rest of the day.
At 4pm I wanted to go back out to see if the cheetah would go to the nearby watering hole but Ellie didn’t want to so we stayed at camp and Ellie made a weird pasta curry for dinner around 5pm, then at 7pm we went to the shop to collect our fresh baked bread that was still hot and then we popped over to the hide when it got dark and we got eaten alive by midgys, then at 8:30pm we went back to the trailer to watch tv before bed.Baca lagi