LEOPARDS, PART 3 - BE PATIENT ! October 22nd, 2014, we were driving between Satara rest camp and Tshokwane picnic spot. About 10 km before Tshokwane there were 2 cars standing still. We asked the people in the first car what they were looking at. It was an English speaking couple. They seemed to be very excited. The lady told us they had seen 2 cheetahs, but basically only their tails. The area was covered with high grass and they had seen 2 tails coming out of the grass. Dont know why they assumed that that was 2 cheetahs, but anyway! We switched off the engine and waited. Nothing happened for the next minutes. The area was covered with grass, bushes and small trees. The question was of course whether it would pay off to wait here. No guarantee whtatsoever that the cheetahs would show up again. Then we saw a tail moving in the high grass! One second later we realized we were watching a leopard mother with cub, and not 2 cheetahs.. The mother was walking south, and the cub seemed to be hesitant. Within a few minutes the number of cars on this spot grew and things became chaotic on the road. Of course everybody wanted to catch a glimpse of either mother leopard or cub! We had fantastic sightings of both mother and cub, but after some 30 minutes she left the scene and walked into the bushes. Funny to see that most cars left in a minute or so; as soon as the animal is gone, so are the cars! We decided to wait a little longer. We parked our car in a small loop, a loop with a view on the river bed. Maybe we waited for 5 minutes only. Almost all the cars had left now, and then she came back! She walked just a few meters from our car, and decided to investigate the river bed. Again we were able to follow her for a while. All in all we must have been there for almost an hour, a great experience!
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 18:42:08 +0000
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