We reversed what we did a few days ago and headed down from Olifants to Satara today. Before we left we did a quick morning drive around the loop near Olifants camp along the Olifants and Letaba rivers. Unfortunately nothing of note to see but we enjoyed our coffee/tea overlooking the Olifants river. We came back to the camp, packed up and headed out back to Satara. This time we took the dirt road for part of the way and added a few more water birds for the trip. Probably the highlight of the day was seeing an African Darter catch a fish about 5 meters away from us (as you can tell it was a slow day). We are now up to 105 birds for the trip which isn’t bad considering we have not seen some pretty standard ones (we haven’t for instance seen any bee-eaters). We also only saw a Martial Eagle for the first time today (though we have seen a lot of other eagles).
The trip down was pretty uneventful. It was hot (well into the 30 degrees again) and also windy (rain is on the way) and so bird viewing wasn’t great and nor was game spotting. As you can see, most of the game (including elephants) were congregating under trees. We did see the usual (impala, kudu, giraffe, elephant, wildebees etc) but nothing really to add to the trip list. At one of the watering holes we noticed zebra all facing the same way and so we again followed their gaze and noticed numerous cars. It was clear from the zebra and the cars that a predator was nearby and it turned out to be two lions under a thorn thicket. They looked pretty similar to the ones we saw two days ago and might very well have been the same two (they were further South but it did look like a male lion and lioness again).
We then headed into Satara for our last night. We decided to ditch the evening drive this time because of the heat and the wind. One last braai (even though it was so windy) and now I’m ready for bed. We have to get up relatively early tomorrow to ensure we get to Skukuza airport in time for our 11:20am flight back to Cape Town. Can’t believe how quickly 5 nights has gone past! We have booked for early 2018 already (this time Helen will be with me) and so already looking forward to that.
Until tomorrow …
P & M
