Today was a scorcher. Predicted to get to 39 C and it got there. At 3:15pm H checked the weather app and it said 37 C, feels like 47 C. At 7pm it was 32 degrees still. It was HOT, HOT, HOT!

We did leave a little earlier this AM for the morning drive and decided to head north to the picnic spot Nkhulu on the Sabie river. It was overcast this morning so that made it more bearable but by the time we got back (at around 8:30am) it was already 28 C. The animals clearly could sense the hot day coming because even in the early morning they weren’t very active.

We did have an interesting sighting of hyena (3 of them) rolling in urine on the side of the road. At the time I had no idea why they would do it but after some research tonight I discovered that they roll in the urine of the animal they are planning on hunting. They apparently do this most often when they are hunting zebra. So it seems the hyena were after breakfast actually.

Besides the hyena we saw all the standard game and nothing else special. Even the birding was slow today. We added 3 more birds taking our tally to 198. We just have tomorrow morning before we fly home so it will be close but we are confident of getting to the 200. We did go out late afternoon but it was really too hot to see much and so we really only birded.

As it was our last night and our food supplies are somewhat diminished, we decided to have dinner at the restaurant (Mugg & Bean). The food was actually pretty good – the only issue was how hot it was. I wanted to be sitting without my shirt on but thought the other diners might not be that happy.

Until tomorrow … P & H