Today was going to be a scorcher. Weather service was predicting a ‘heat wave’ for the area and 41 C. Fortunately it ‘only’ got to 39 C. When we left on our 5:30am drive it was already 22 C. It was a short drive as I had a meeting I needed to do at 8am and wanted to have some breakfast before we started. There are some very good game spotting roads that run along the Olifants River. We took those and saw a lot of standard game – elephant, giraffe, waterbuck, kudu and a huge herd of buffalo. Early morning coffee overlooking the Engelhart Dam and then back to camp so I could do my meeting. B, S & H headed out for another drive to the other side of the dam. I gave them strict instructions to not see anything good and fortunately they didn’t!

They got back mid-morning while I was still doing my meeting. The cellphone reception is very erratic and so that made contributing to my meeting quite difficult. I had to type my points or questions into the chat box as they couldn’t hear me when I tried to speak. The connection kept dropping so I had to constantly reconnect. The hardship of trying to work from a game park!

We decided to go out late afternoon and do drinks at the dam. B, S & H all had a G&T and I acted the designated driver and responsibly didn’t drink. We just for around 30 minutes at the dam. We had one mammal on the evening drive and that was a Common Duiker. First one for the trip. We also added only very few birds today – only 2 to the trip list taking my total to 122.

We ate in the restaurant tonight as we didn’t feel like doing a braai when the temperature was 36 C at 6pm. Even now as I type this (at 9:20pm) it is 31 C. Besides the meeting which consumed some of my day, it was a relaxed and chilled day.

Until tomorrow …

P, S, H & B