Sightings WOW, photos not so... (Oct 2018)

[Mel]

Wow, Mello! I would have wet myself!

Why? They were busy with themselves and actually rather skittish with our presence

[Mel]

Rosa is such a beautiful Leopard lady, Mel,

and great that you could get that brilliant shots from her

Thanks, Pumbaa But I actually think Kai made the better model
Rosa is a very shy girl. At least for us. We have seen her three times by now - exclusively at night...

[Mel]

Wow, amazing sighting!!

Despite the fatigue, it was hard to go to sleep afterwards

[Mel]

Here's how I organize the food/drinks for an entire month:

I have about 4 - 6 dinner menus and just repeat them - that cuts down on the # of items and speeds up shopping.
Ex. - instead of 10 diff. meats, I can just buy - steak, chicken, hamburger, and frozen fish/prawns as avail. We also have an Hors d' oeuver platter (olives, nuts, cheese, sardines, tuna stuffed eggs, ham/cheese roll-ups etc etc). We also like Pizza on the grill, but I embellish the store bought ones.

I have 3 Pick'nPay Cooler Bags to carry it all in with frozen juice boxes, extra water bottles, etc

ALSO - Pic 'n Pay does ALL our shopping for us ahead, except for Produce, Dairy, and Meat which saves SO much time.

We also buy/replenish from the Park's Shops as needed - extra charcoal, wood, eggs, bread, etc

That's probably too much info., but didn't want to ignore your question

Those tips can never be to detailed Thanks for that

We're naturally a bit more restricted with me not being able to eat wheat and spelt flour is hard to get by. So we mainly live on fruit, vegs, cheese of all sorts and of course meat. While the SO lives on crackers, I do Ryevita instead of sandwich bread.

We get the meat from the local butcher. Our car rental person is his brother, so they have the stuff sitting in the fridge-freezer on our car when we get there. Everything is vaccuum packed. It's basically the same meat that you can get in the park shops by now.

And we also do the Pick'n'Pay thing - minus the fresh stuff (which is probably what you refer to as "produce") and the dairies.

The menu is also quite simple and over the first three or four days, it's always salad as a side - as long as lettuce keeps.

It's mandatory that I make a pasta salad, so I bring the according noodles from homes.

[Mel]

I kinda forgot to add the midday lioness

And then there was another the morning we had to leave after our nine wonderful and so relaxing, yet still existing days and nights at Grootkolk.

[Lisbeth]

The midday lioness is very good looking

[Mel]

On our way to Kieliekrankie we found a purple roller. Not often that I get to see them.

South of Nossob there was a road block who wasn't even bothered with all the trailers driving past her

It was the trip of the too much lens lion sightings again

[Mel]

We took the Upper Dune Road to cross over to the Auob Riverbed and found that raptor sightings there were almost better than in the Nossob

[Mel]

Since we were still a bit before check-in time and hadn't planned to go far that evening anymore, we decided to take the short detour from the Kieliekrankie turn off at the Lower Dune Road and Auchterlonie waterhole.

In the big tree right next to the road, there was our friend the tawny again as if it had been waiting for us

And this secretary.

Arriving at Kieliekrankie we were greeted by a very excited Jacques. He had so much to tell about the sightings of the day that we for a moment considered if we should unpack and get going again. But the experiences from our last two trip had taught us that most cats were gone by the time we get there, so we gave it a pass. Even if it was for two cheetah mums with cubs and a leopard in a tree.

[Mel]

The only thing we did do, was going back to Auchterlonie again that evening for a sundowner. I can't explain, but we love sitting there, listening to the sound of the windmill and looking at the museum from below. I really have no idea how many photos I got of that little hut by now, but no stay at Kielie is complete with another one

Last sighting out of camp was this secretary in a tree. And although I have seen them up there before, I never got such a nice photo opportunity before. Usually they are way more into the field than that.