On Safari With Karen 17 February 2015

17 February 2015

Today was the last day of this tour and we had a great ending! First animals we saw was a mother and young elephant, followed by three different sightings of hyena and a honey badger that first pulled an angry face at us, then scowled and then quickly crossed the road in front of us. 

But our squee of this morning was a troop of baboons. Ok, not everyone might find them pretty, but these guys were full of energy so they were very entertaining to watch. There were youngsters playing judo, a wrestling match was going on and others climbed in the tallest and flimsiest trees. These last ones kept on almost falling out of them "whooooooooh", but most times just managed to hang on and climb a bit down. But in the end one actually did fall out... We watched this show for at least 30min, when suddenly an alarm call sounded. At first they were not disturbed, but at the fourth call, the tone had changed and suddenly all baboons shot off towards the calling baboon. A lot more of them came running out of the bush than we had seen so far, but without a backwards glance they all disappeared.

We ended our tour on a high when we found a leopard as our last animal of this tour. She was lying on the rocks at first, but after licking her paws and washing her face she got up. She moved around a bit so we drove around the rocks and saw her again on the other side. Here she was leaping around the big rocks, jumping like a proper big cat. Then she spotted a klipspringer and started stalking it. But the klipspringer had seen her coming and sounded the alarm. Still she made a mad dash for him, but the agile klipspringer was long gone. She then bumbled around a bit more, sitting down, even stalking a kudu. We sadly had to leave her in the end as the guests needed to make their transfer to the airport as they fly back home tonight. It marked the end of a great safari. Thanks Suzy, John, John and Trina for joining us!

Other interesting sightings: hyena with pups and a hyena that walked of with a piece of a roadworks signpost, white rhinos, waterbucks, impalas, bateleurs, kudu bulls, dwarf mongooses, hippos, goliath heron, Cape turtle doves courting, tawny eagle, crocodile, red-collared widowbird, giraffe, Speke's hinged tortoise and a few elephant bulls.