I woke to a strange noise and then realized it was the Cow’s phone ringing. The rats squawked “We are on our way with the presents” and hung up. A few seconds later they were bashing on the door, which got the Cow and I moving. Then the Cow blurted out “its 4:45am” which is way too early for her, but too late as the rats were already in.
We finished the present and car packing mission just after 6am, so left for the long trek to Satara shortly thereafter. It was another overcast, windy miserable day, so I again was rather pelican with the conditions.
I had packed the torch away, so we again drove in the dark for half an hour before we could see enough to start looking for wildlife, however a hyena did run down the road in front of us for a few minutes, but we never got close enough for a pic.
The rest of the drive up towards Lower Sabie produced the normal locals, but a few km outside camp we stopped for the first set of pics as 2 lionesses were cooling off next to the river.
We stopped at Nkuhlu for half an hour to stretch the legs and for the Cow to have some coffee, which is always stressful for me as I hate wasting time, but today was the Cow’s day, so I just wobbled around and kept my mouth shut.
Just after Nkuhlu we found another 2 lions relaxing, but we didn’t hang around long as I had promised the Cow a birthday breakfast at Tshokwane.
The rest of the drive to Tshokwane didn’t produce much other than the odd buffalo, ellies and the normal gang.
We finally arrived at Tshokwane just before 11am, so it was already fairly busy, but I again shut my trap and stood in the long queue to order.
The Cow, Hawkeyes and I had chosen toasted chicken mayo, Bushpig and Albert toasted cheese, but when we got to the front of the queue I changed my choice to a bush breakfast, which as you will find out later was probably the best decision I have ever made on a Kruger trip.
After nearly an hour of walking around Tshokwane and looking at the sighting board 5 times, my patience collapsed “Stuff this where’s the chow, I’m going to drive off!!” which got the Cow cruising to the kitchen to see what the delay was and I went on another walk.
When I returned from the walk all were already eating and the Cow explained that after an initial few blank faces, she had found the chow in the kitchen, so she had brought it to the table, but it was already ice cold.
I swallowed my bush breakfast hole as I normally do, waited for the others to finish and stole the odd piece of chow left, but only had 1 taste of Hawkeyes’s toasted chicken and it didn’t taste too cool, so never stole another.
5 minutes later we were back in the car on the way to Satara and the Cow started “That chicken mayo tasted horrible” and Hawkeyes also moaned about it from the back, but we never thought about it again. (That’s until 3am and 4 continual days thereafter)
Our next sighting that we stopped to take pics of was a secretary bird a few km outside Tshokwane.
Mazithi Dam produced the normal locals and an ellie having a dop.
A few km after Mazithi Dam there’s a little dirt loop of around 15m off the road and we found 6 cars jammed into this space, 2 of which were completely off the road, so reversed a few meters up the tar to see what they were looking at and spotted plenty lion.
You could only really get close to them from the little loop, so we drove back down to the loop to wait for a gap, but my ever losing patience battle took over and after 15 minutes I started into the loop, which immediately set the Cow off “What are you doing, you are going to block others, etc, etc”, but the gasket had popped already and I drove past all, stopped next to the front car and said “I know that we are blocking you, but it’s sleeping lion and we will be gone in 10 seconds after a pic”
We had already taken 2 pics and were driving off before they even responded, but they were probably still in shock.
Kumana Dam produced the normal waterbuck gang, warties, impala, wildebeest, etc, so we spent a few minutes checking it out and then continued on to the little Baobab loop, which has produced leopard and cubs for us in the past.
I was super charged entering the loop as we still didn’t have a leopard so when the Cow started shouting “THERE, there!!” I also started “Take a pic, where!!”
The Cow squawked again “In the tree there!!”, but I still couldn’t see a leopard, “Where!!!”
“There’s a gymnogene over there!!”
My leopard had turned into a bird that was highly excited about something in a tree and was attacking the branch.
After a few minutes the gymnogene gave up and parked off on the branch.
More leopard hunting cars had arrived during this time and where also asking “where”, which caused the gymnogene to get nervous and fly off.
The next stop was for a steenbok very close to the road.
The last thing we stopped to take pics of before Satara was a lone ostrich wobbling around.
To be continued
You always see them and we never do!! 
Nice sighting of the AWC. 
Things will fire for you guys in 3 weeks as it's the best time to be in the park 
Love the early morning pic of the male lion in the mist. 
