Satara Day 2
October 2, 2017

We left the camp at sunrise (up at 5:15am). Michael was impressed with himself and took a photo of the time on the car as we drove out to prove to everyone that he can get up early if needed.  Admittedly we did go to sleep at about 9:15pm last night and Michael is again sleeping as I type this (it is 10:50am!).

It was a beautiful morning – 17 degrees at 5:30am – not a breath of wind. We headed for the dam nearby and on route added zebra to our trip list (we also impala; kudu; wildebeest; giraffe).  At the dam it was clear there was something good to see considering the number of cars and as we approached we spotted two lions (one male and one female). They got up and walked about 100 meters and then sat down again. A really good sighting of lion. We watched for a bit and then headed off to see what else was in store for us. We had early morning coffee/tea at another dam and saw zebra, wildebeest & impala at the dam while we drank our coffee/tea.

On our way back we passed the lions again (who were just sleeping) even though there was a herd of impala not much more than 100 meters from them.  As they were doing nothing and didn’t seem to be interested in doing anything we headed off again. About 1km or so down the road we saw two male giraffe fighting and stopped to watch them for some time. The one was trying to get his neck under the others leg to lift him up and throw him over and eventually he managed to achieve that.  I got some really good photos of the fight and if I’m able to I will try to upload one or two to blog and Instagram.  We got back to camp at just before 9am to have breakfast and spend the rest of the day just relaxing. Michael took that literally and slept from about 10am-12:30pm.

Unfortunately while typing this earlier today the electricity went off.  I thought that it would be short-lived but it’s now 8:10pm and we still have no electricity.  What is even more irritating is that it seems the majority of the camp is restored but not our block of huts. Doesn’t look like power is coming back on tonight for us – at least we moving on tomorrow! Still would have been nice to have had coffee tonight. Whole meal done on the braai again (fortunately we were prepared for that). That’s a photo of us eating by laptop light – romantic father/son dinner!

We did go out for a drive this afternoon and saw tons of game again but nothing significant. The closest we came was driving up next to a stopped car and asking them what they were looking at and their reply was “a lion just took out a zebra and then went into those thickets and we have seen it again”. When I asked how long ago was that, she replied “about 4 minutes ago”! So if only we hadn’t stopped to ID that one bird or stopped to check if that was a log or leopard we might have seen it! Someone famous in our family once said “you can’t fine tune life” and he was right .. #noregrets

Most importantly the electricity just came back on – so I was wrong on that front! But while I was hoping to upload the photo of the giraffe fighting – I realised that I have left my card reader at home and while I thought I had a cable to connect my camera to my laptop that thought couldn’t be realised either. Where is Stephen with his cables when you need him?!

Until tomorrow then …

P & M

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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