Standard morning drive at 6am was only the guys today. Not far out of the camp Daniel excitedly shouted Leopard. I hit the brakes and reversed but not in time as it was supposedly walking into the grass and away from us. We will have to take his word for it because I never saw it and therefore it can’t be verified. It’s like the standard philosophy question of a tree falling in a forest – does it make a sound or not? If you think you saw a leopard and no one else sees it, was there really a leopard there or not?

Back to the camp for breakfast and then off to take Stephen and Chloe to the airport for their flight back to Cape Town. Stephen has university tomorrow and so couldn’t stay longer (though I suspect he would have liked to) and Chloe reckons cold and wet Cape Town is a better place than 30 degrees watching lions. She clearly isn’t from the same manufacturer as the rest of the family. They were leaving from Skukuza airport directly back to Cape Town. Michael and Daniel elected to stay and loaf at the camp and so Helen and I took them up. It was about a 2 hour drive and we managed to see 2 separate sets of lions on the way up in addition to the normal buck, rhino, elephant etc. The most remarkable part of the trip was seeing a buck in a tree (yes I am not drunk and neither are you). It must have been killed by a leopard and dragged up the tree. The number of cars at the sighting was incredible. They were hoping that the leopard would reappear to eat its prey. We drove past it on the way back to our camp again and besides one vulture in the air and an eagle eating some of it, there was no further action and that was probably an hour later.

We dropped off Stephen and Chloe for their flight. It is a lovely little airport with the best departure lounge I have ever seen. Everything went smoothly (how complicated can it be with only one flight coming and going at a time) and so Helen and I headed into Skukuza for some refreshments and we saw the plane go right over our heads as it headed for Cape Town. We then headed back to Pretoriouskop and didn’t see anything different on the way back than what we had seen on the way up. We spent the afternoon relaxing (and sleeping) in the camp. Michael and Daniel thought they should try to catch a guinea fowl but they don’t have any super powers like the ability to fly or change directly suddenly. I think they realized it wasn’t that likely or easy. We went out for a later afternoon drive again and unfortunately did not see anything new (and no predators).

Tonight is our last night in the Kruger Park and so we had our last braai tonight of Impala and Warthog chops. We definitely had the best fire in the circle of huts in our area. We could give lessons to people on how to start a fire. It is a Super Moon tonight (look that up if you don’t know what it is) and as the sunset the moon was rising and was very impressive. There is also a partial eclipse happening in the early hours of the morning (I don’t think I will be up for that).

Until tomorrow …

P, H, C (because I miss her not being with us), S, M, D (because he was arguing he didn’t deserve last spot yesterday … clearly hasn’t learnt his lesson yet)