Chasing the Leopard

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Geo: -23.9561, 31.4416

Started our game drive this morning with a laugh as we watched a hyena with a Coke can in its mouth cross the road. We are not quite sure why it felt it needed this can but.......there it was. We were moving from Skukuza to Lower Sabie and so we were heading down that direction on this morning drive.

We had to creep slowly past a massive elephant that was right up against the side of the road but we made it safely. Continuing down the road we saw two cars stopped one each direction and we asked what they had seen since we could not see anything. They said the people in the car facing the other direction had seen a leopard cross the road from the river side back into the bush.

We thanked them and then raced to the entrance to a dirt road we knew about that paralleled the tar road. Driving along Robert spots the leopard lying majestically on a bluff! We watched him because there was a group of impala in the vicinity. He then headed off to hunt we imagine from the warning snorts we were hearing from the impala. Never could find him again but was a very large beautiful leopard.

Got to Lower Sabie and found a very nice spot right near the ablutions. We found out too late it did get quite a bit of late afternoon sun but we were usually out on game drive by that time and then it would cool down in the evening. When we got to Lower Sabie we went and signed up for a walking safari.

Our evening drive was fairly calm but we were in search of the mother lion with babies at waterhole at dusk, leopard with impala in the tree and other rumors of game. We did see the impala in the tree but there was no leopard with it and some big elephants and vultures on some game, probably another impala on the ground. We had an early evening because we needed to meet the rangers for the walking safari at 5:30 a.m.

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