Day 2

A day at Ngala.

5:30 am, The guest safety staff come by to wake you up. Don't bother to shower, no one else will either. Just thow on some clothes.

6:00 Morning tea at the lodge. If you are ready before 6, call guest safety, otherwise at 6 it is light enough to walk to the lodge on your own.As soon as your group is assembled, you can go for the morning drive. (You want fleece and wind breaker in the morning. Mark says it's "fresh" I'd guess about 45 F. and in a moving vehicle)- Drinks and snacks toward the end of the morning, Breakfast upon return. For us that was 9:45 to 10, but luch is a drawn out affair, ending around 11 or so.

1:00 - 1:45 Lunch, if you have room. After that you have time for a shower, nap, catch up on blogging or what not.

3:00 Afternoon tea, and afternoon Drive.- Drinks and snacks at the end of the evening drive

Dinner on return, about 7:30 or so. (It's dark and quite cold by then.)I'd say if you don't get enough to eat around here, there is something wrong with you.

On the morning drive we found more impala, our first giraffe. This one was more shy than most. That whole camoflage scheme is quite effective. This giraffe just dissappeared in to the trees. Also a dazzle of zebra, a solitary wildebeast (gnu) bull, a black backed jackle, but no leopard. Solly tracked with one of the other trackers and they were able to locate a kill, fresh impala lodged in the crook of the tree. Mark was sure we would be able to simply go back in the evening and the leopard would be there.

Alas, the best laid plans of rangers and leopards. When afternoon rolled around, the impala was gone. Report was that the hyenas had it. since hyena don't climb, Mark suggested that the leopard must have shifted it and dropped it. Once that happened, hyenas are perfectly able to grab the meat for their own use. Solly was dropped off to try and find the track again while we headed again toward a watering hole. There we found a journey of giraffe and saw hippos sunning themselves.

While driving, we saw a large number of vultures in trees, Mark thought they might be waiting their turn at a kill. The leopard perhaps? So into the brush we went. It turns out there is a very good reason for the brush guards on those trucks, where there was no place to drive, Mark simply ran something over. Mostly small (3" dia. or so) trees. The acacia will pretty much bounce right back. The knobthorn, however are truly dangerous.There was no kill, but we did see a rhino mama and her baby, they obviously didn't mind the thorn bushes and we never really got a good look at them. Mark was determined to get closer, until Solly called on the radio, he had found the leopard!

We had barely enough light for a few pictures, then the leopard climed down from his tree into the gathering gloom. Mark says he saw an impala, and showed it to us, we were in the open and both the impala and leopard in the edge of the brush. We watched the stalk in the twilight, the leopard, still a juvenile, ignoring it's mother's calls to come join her. Suddenly, the impala barked it's warning call, looked right at the leopard and started moving away. Mark immediatly declared the hunt over.

Back to camp and Dinner.