Old lopsided Scarface from a few days prior was hanging out in the morning sun. He had definitely been in the wars and had a few wounds that were still healing.
Around 5 minutes later I spotted Heksie approaching, so I expected her to pull in behind us, but instead she cruised up next to us and asked
“What have you seen?”
I thought she was pulling my leg, but then I realised that they hadn’t seen the leopard, so I casually said
“There’s a leopard just next to us”
Heksie’s facial expression changed slightly as I’m sure she was trying to work out if I was pulling her leg and then she lifted up in her seat so that she could look over my bonnet and her facial expression changed bigtime
“Nee, ***$% man”
We all cracked up in our car as the Cow was filming, so got the comments on camera, but Heksie was ignoring us and was trying to take pics over our bonnet which wasn’t working out.
“I can’t get a pic over your bonnet!”
I informed Hekise to rather pull in behind us as one would get a view from there; however we were obviously in the prime spot, so I took a few more pics, indicated to Heksie that she could take our spot and continued up to the S86.
We didn’t find our S86 local, but some lion appeared in the bush, however it was a mission trying to find a good view, hence we took a couple of frustrating pics and moved on until the Cow got excited about a mongoose and then a steenbok just before the end of the loop.
Scarface was still parking off on our way back, but a gang of cars had formed, so we just continued on much to the confusion of a few at the sighting.
Around 2km from Tshokwane we spotted a few cars stopped and apparently a leopard had briefly showed itself, but it had now disappeared.
A few minutes later all the cars except one continued on and we weren’t ready to give up just yet either, so I slowly cruised forward until we came across a drain which went under the road and switched off to wait.
Minutes later a movement caught my eye and resulted in a big skriek as a leopard was looking at me from the drain which was below my open driver’s window, so I was half panicking with the electric window that wouldn’t work as I had switched the car off and at the same time I was snatching for the Cow’s camera, but the leopard also got a fright and ducked back into the drain as I slyly tried to sneak a pic without even looking into the camera.
I was now completely overexcited, but had to curtail my mood because another car had pulled up next to the Cow and the aunty was asking “what do you see?”
In this hyped up mood I work in brief abbreviations, talk fast and assume the person’s acumen allows them to fill in the blanks, however the Cow went into this long winded explanation about the location of the drain and a leopard, so I lost it.
“Drain under road, leopard in it, need to check both sides, check out your other window”
The Cow started to elbow me; the aunty had a blank face, but still didn’t move, so we couldn’t get to the other side of the road, which only got me more frustrated, so I tried to slow down as she must have been rather slow.
“The leopard is probably going to come out of the drain on the other side of the road, so you need to move or check the drain.”
The aunty still had a blank face and then asked the Cow.
“Do you see it still?”
I was now close to having a blood pressure moment, so just put my head on the steering wheel and bit my lip.
Fortunately the Cow answered simply
“No, not at the moment” and the aunty looked around for a few seconds and moved on.
Seconds later the Cow shrieked “LEOPARD” as he bolted out of the drain on the other side of the road.
I slammed the car into “drive”, but first the turbo lag thing happened with the darn diesel Navara, so nothing happened and then we rocketed across to the other side of the road which caused frantic braking.
Fortunately the leopard stopped to check us out so at least we weren’t getting only bum pics.
The leopard continued down to the riverbed, so I frantically tried to come up with a plot and remembered the new loop where one can overlook the riverbed just behind us, therefore roared off in reverse much to the surprise of the occupants of a few other slowly approaching cars.
The rats were now loving this “Go dad!”
The occupants of another car had also worked out the same plot and we both pulled into the new little loop just as the leopard appeared in the riverbed.
The leopard paused and then did a strange thing with its foot, so I wondered if it had a thorn in it, before heading our direction.
The leopard then went into a shy creep mode, snuck behind a small tuft of grass in the riverbed and amazingly, completely disappeared.
To be continued
I suppose it was a good day 
I do feel the more time one spends in the bush that patterns can be picked up. We certainly learnt a few more this trip.