Advertisement
Published: June 17th 2017
01 Approaching
The pride approaching the waterhole.Geo: -23.558, 24.1057
For most of the night we heard the lions loudly contact calling and later in the morning when we checked the camera trap we saw that last night they had been very close by. We left the camp site at about 6am. Paul drove us in the direction that he thought they would be. He was right. Less 150 metres from our camp site we came across a pride of 12 lions! They were slowly walking along the track towards us. There were three generations of lions, including many young ones. I couldn't believe that they were so close to our unfenced camp site.
They were gorgeous to watch. Paul reversed so that they could continue walking along the track. At one stage they were about less than a metre outside of my window, so I held my breath as I partially closed it. I took so many photos of them, luckily there was just enough natural light as the sun was starting to rise. The three older lionesses stood around as they made a decision on where to go. We came to a junction and waited to see which way they would go and then we followed the
02 Many Lions
There are many lions in this pride! pride.
The pride was now on the track that leads to the waterhole. It was nice to watch the younger ones jumping around and playing with each other. When they got closer to the waterhole the pride separated and had a bit of rest and play in the area.
One of the older lioness then lead the pride down the same track as the two lions from yesterday took. We could only follow them for so long, we didn't want to risk getting in trouble as it was a No Entry track. Some of the younger tried to climb a small tree and they seemed to be stuck, but did work out how to get down. This sighting made for some great photos as the lions stood amongst the little purple flowers. It was a bit disappointing that we could no longer follow and watch them. I enjoyed this morning's forty minute lion sighting and seeing them interact with each other.
As we expected there were no other animals at the waterhole area, so we collected the camera trap and drove back to camp. On the way back to camp we carefully checked the sandy track to see what other animals
03 Drinking
Most of the lions had a drink of water. walked through last night. Not surprisingly we saw many lions tracks.
Back at camp we had a coffee and some rusks and then packed up. At about 7:30am we left camp and drove to our next camp site. Along the way we stopped at the Tropic of Capricorn sign to take a few photos. On the way we saw a kudu and a dung beetle.
When we arrived we drove around both pans – Moreswe and Mabuakelobe. We saw ostriches, springbok and lots of different birds at the artificial waterhole where water was being pumped. It was now 10am and we slowly we drove to our camp site for the night Moreswe #3. Camp site number 1 and 2 are the better ones as they are elevated and have a view of the pan, unfortunately we were not able to book these. Our camp site was vacant so we set up our tent, under the large shady tree.
It was now time for brunch, so we had our favourite of toasted jaffles and Amarula coffee. As we had woken up so early, I was now ready for a nap.
Early afternoon we went for a short game drive around the
04 Lions
The lions taking an interest in the camera trap. pans. Being the middle of the day it was quite warm and there wasn't too much to see, as the animals would rest in the shade during the heat of the day. At the pan there were a few birds drinking water, we also saw ostriches and a couple of gemsbok. Paul then drove me back to camp because I wanted to relax in the shade and do some reading. In the meantime he wanted to go and chat to the other campers.
I sat under the tree, put my feet up and did some reading and daydreaming.
Later in the afternoon Paul and I went for a drive around the pans, just to see what was about. We saw springbok, various birds at the pan and gemsbok. As the sun was setting the light was beautiful and we took quite a few photos with the springbok as the sun set behind them.
We were a little bit sad tonight, as it was our last night and we were not ready to go back to work. Our trip here had gone far too quickly. Once we had our dinner we started to pack up and put stuff back in the car.
05 Too Close to our Tent
This is the sight we came across just around the corner from our tent! It was not wise at all to leave food out and we knew better than that. It was quite dark now and we frequently used our torches to do a quick scan of the camp site. Then from the area behind our tent, a brown hyena appeared. We started to yell at it, it wasn't very phased and continued to slowly walk through our camp site. It seemed to be looking for food. We weren't too worried about it as it lurked behind the ablutions. Once we had packed everything away, we went to bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0418s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
