For a few hours, we tracked 6 different leopards - a mom and her two babies, and an older male chasing a female and younger male. We sent Petros off again to see if he could find any of these leopards (just after hearing a nearby lion roar - good luck, Petros! Hope your walkie talkie protects you). Because this big bad leopard was on the hunt to mate, his movements were very erratic and difficult to track. At one point, we knew we'd gotten really close when we saw some large impalas running and leaping over huge bushes and another group of kudu staring very alertly in the same direction.
But alas, this trio of leopards wasn't to be. Too crazy with their behavior since they were in heat. So we found Petros again, and he led us towards the mom and her baby cubs. Unfortunately, she was very skittish and wasn't in the mood to be tracked.
We did find a gigantic crocodile sunning himself along a watering hole and a hibernating lizard. But no leopard.
Our collective moods were pretty bummed as 10:00 rolled around which signaled the end of our game drive. Godfrey and Petros had done their best and found us a bunch of leopards, but none close enough to see. As we stopped to check out another hippo, Godfrey got the word on his walkie talkie that another camp had found a leopard, and if we were ok with a late breakfast, we could go see that one. Heck yes, let's go see the leopard! (One of our other American friends in the rover wasn't too happy with this decision since it would screw up their departure time/Kruger time - but the other 7 of us overruled him - the leopard was so much cooler than a few more hours in Kruger). So off we sped, 40 minutes down bumpy dirt roads, when we crawled through some more bushes and came across a beautiful female leopard and one of her 7 month old cubs (the other one was around somewhere but we never saw him). She hung out by her impala kill/our rover for a few minutes, then headed down into the river bed to take a nap with her cub. Awwww.... (for those who I told I wanted to take a leopard cub into my vehicle with me, I now rescind that statement after seeing how gigantic a 7 mo. old cub is).
Back to Motswari we went, running into zebra and giraffes on the way back. We got back to camp, quickly packed up under the watchful eyes of a herd of impala who roamed next to our rondeval, and said our thank yous and goodbyes to Godfrey and the rest of the staff.
Next stop: Kruger National Park.
1 comments:
...um, Sarah....GO BACK and GET ME THAT LEOPARD!!.... :)
Carmina
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