Our afternoon drive was planned out based on being back at Aardlam, Mel & Gibson in good time to hopefully see them get up. We also had a booking at the restaurant which had been made for 6pm. Not exactly the best plan in my opinion as the gates closed at 6:30pm, but in order to keep family peace I kept quiet
As it was still pretty hot we opted for the guarantee of elephants down at Hapoor. Whilst watching the herds there was a jackal trundling around - presumably hoping some of the little hoglets would move away from their parents, but no such luck
Amongst all the activity, this mother brought her calf round the waterhole and close to our car
I think someone must have had their trunk stepped on or something as suddenly there was a big commotion and the little one had the fright of its life and ran off
Round the back of the waterhole, Valli Moosa was chilling out. He seemed to give one of the youngsters a bit of a nudge as if to say 'you're too old to be drinking milk'
I was keen to get back to the lion to ensure we didn't miss any action like the day before. There wasn't much to see along the way until we got to the Woodlands dam. Some sharp eyes spotted another scrub hare in the shade, whilst a jackal came down to the water to drink
Back near the lions there were a few cars around but not the pileup I had feared. After quizzing a few other drivers, no-one seemed to know where the lions actually were. We presumed the other side of the same bushes where we had seen them earlier. Sure enough at least one of the boys had a paw sticking out, but then suddenly Aardlam appeared from somewhere else entirely.
She took a stroll across a nice open area towards the boys
I was hoping she might get the boys to come round the other side of the bushes, but instead she kept moving and was heading towards Domkrag dam itself. This is one of those 'get out of your car at your own risk' lookout points and although there is fencing surrounding the parking area, it's basically so low that even a tortoise could hurdle it if required
We swung the car up and hopped out in different directions. The main lookout area is down towards the water, but there's a section off to the side which is even more exposed that I ventured off to first and I'm glad I did because Gibson had got up and was meandering in my direction... this really was a lion on foot experience
In hindsight it would have been best to watch him for longer, but I was convinced Aardlam would appear by the water at any moment so went over that side. Unfortunately she was playing games with the spectators and she somehow disappeared.
It was probably less the spectators and more about the zebra herd which came down to drink - she must have been watching them quietly somewhere. The zebra seemed unaware of the lion due to the wind direction, so they were enjoying a good dust bath and evening drink.
The general consensus amongst the spectators was that we were about to see a chase and possibly a kill when some wingnut opened their car door, set the alarm off and scattered the zebra far enough away that the lions wouldn't stand a chance. I popped back to the 'exposed' viewing area but couldn't see any lion out that way and only found out later that Gibson was lying down the other side of a bush just 10m away from me
It was getting close to our 6pm cut-off so we decided to hop back into the car and see if we could figure out where the lions had moved to. This time Aardlam was visible again on the edge of the slope up to the viewing area
Again she got up and was walking in the direction of the dam, so we repeated the crazy car manoeuvring to get back to the viewing area. We could see her walking just below us through the bushes but just as she was about to come out into the open she had second thoughts and turned around
We had run out of time, but it was becoming a bit of a circus by this stage so I wasn't too sad to leave. Plus we had had some great sightings during the day already....
