We decided to have breakfast and then leave for Nossob this morning.  The drive to Nossob is 160km and given the quality of the roads that is around a 5-6 hour drive.  We left just after 8am with the intention of stopping at the first picnic spot for a break/tea and then the second picnic spot for lunch.

Before our first stop we managed to see our first lion of the trip – a male lion drinking at a watering hole and then it walked off and eventually sat half way up a dune.  Later on the journey north we came across a jackal looking very anxious – running backwards and forwards.  It had seen a caracal and was desperate to chase it away.  We assume it must have had a den somewhere near. The good thing was that we also got a great sighting of caracal which is very hard to see during the day as they are nocturnal animals. Some of our group had never seen one before (including Michael) so it was really a good sighting.

The quality of the road was very bad at stages and I felt like my hands were going to shake off from the corrugations on the road.  I got Michael to drive after lunch and of course the road turned it smooth sand and it was like sailing after that. On the final stretch of the road into Nossob we saw an African Wild Cat (it crossed the road in front of us) and so we ended up the day seeing 3 different cat sightings.

We arrived at Nossob around 2:30pm and checked in. The Ms and Gs are staying in a river front chalet.  While there is not much of a river (or in fact there isn’t one at all), they do have a great position. The chalet basically forms part of the boundary fence. We had dinner at their place and while we were having dinner we noticed two sets of eyes and sure enough two jackal right up at the fence (no more than 5 meters away).

We also went to the hide after dinner and again saw a jackal at the watering hole (it is floodlit).  Quickly trying to send this before the power goes out (it turns off at 10pm which is 1 minute).

Until tomorrow

P, H, S, M & O