So the plan was originally to spend the night at Marloth and as we did not have a booking to loiter around Marloth the next day but early on that evening we decided to rather just go early to the gate and try our luck .My sister had a booking so they would get in .We had been getting up early to travel so another early day would not hurt ...so here is the bonus days trip into Kruger ...
Arriving early at the gate we were about 15 cars back and got directed into the naughty no booking line . The HR & gate guard released all the pre-bookings and waited for more to arrive and they got released as they came .Eventually after an hour they allowed us no booking to start entering in batches of about 5.(I still prefer Malelane system first come first served )
We headed up to Gomondwane loop .Our first sighting
was similar to our second
We took the obligatory picture of the dead tree so we have quite a few and it has not changed much
Next we had probably the sighting of the trip for us but it was brief and distant so we have no photographic proof .

As we were coming to the end of the loop a small animal was walking in the road some distance ahead of us .Is that a buck

no as we got a little closer it darted to the side it was a AWC in the wild not in a camp ...
We went up to Sunset dam and found the bird perching on the drain was somewhat larger today
The Kingfisher was looking for breakfast
There was no Lenny today but this Glossy Starling was willing to pose ..
We stopped into Lower Sabie for a quick break and thankfully it was very quiet this early ...