Lions for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner (October 2019)

[Richprins]

Mello!!


The animals look so clean there!

Ag don't worry, either you see them or you don't!

I like the black and white shot...

[ExFmem]

Lovely Bothselo pics. We were all lucky that morning to catch him before crossing the road and disappearing. Your TT is certainly titled appropriately - they were indeed everywhere. Really nice pics, and I also like the B/W one.

[Flutterby]

Lucky leopard, but what a gorgeous young male lion!!

[Mel]

all.

Must get this one finished in time before the next trip and looking at my social schedule for the next month,
I'll need to get a grip

[Mel]

Urikaruus - 16th October 2019

Normality had caught up with us again, so down south it was. We still hadn't found Miera, and honestly, doing the same route 9 days in a row should bring some success. Little did we know then

First up were the road dwellers who accidentally who had confused the road with the riverbed, so they were lying in the wrong place this time.
One of the males was the first we saw and since we couldn't see any movement on him, we almost feared that he was not amongst the living anymore. But after a few minutes watching him, he just turned out to be a proper lion who can lie completely still and snooze.

He gave us the heads up that he was still alive and well

We quickly found the two ladies as well, but one was well obscured, so no proof shot of her.

The other male was far off too, but the formerly lifeless lion got into gear and walked over to one of his girls.

They all fell asleep again very quickly and we carried on.

[Mel]

The rest of the road was pretty quiet and the next best sighting were giraffes close to Houmoed, the furthest south we have ever seen them.

[Mel]

Also some cute bee-eaters that weren't that numerous on this trip were posing nicely.

[Mel]

By the time we returned to the location of the lions, they lived up to their nickname again.

They were REALLY close

[Mel]

And en route back to camp a black-chested snake-eagle was doing its rounds.

[Mel]

From fellow visitors we had gathered intelligence that the three young males from the day before had moved up to 14th waterhole and seeing that it was still relatively early, the SO decided that he wanted to go up there while I preferred watching the waterhole in front of our deck. The lions were still there alright and the SO even took photos but sleeping lions in the shade are not that worthwhile sharing. Me, I didn't see much in camp - even the squirrels kept their distance

For the afternoon drive we opted for the road dwellers again, vowing that we would just carry on if the place was packed with cars. But astonishingly - considering it had been a rather quiet day throughout - we were the only car, so we settled in with the big cats. It's rather humbling to have lions at such proximity

And the ladies were eager to please - first with some funny faces