We were the only car watching the lions; however they weren’t easy to see if you didn’t know where to look, but as this was the H1-3 we expected another car to arrive shortly and the plan was to point out the lions for them and move on.
10 minutes later I was getting irritated as the lions were just parking off sleeping and no other cars had arrived, so we continued on.
We stopped at Tshokwane for a quick ablution break and I did explain to 2 guys at the sighting board who were desperate for lion where to find them.
The H1-2 produced more of the usual crowd and we stopped a few times, but our final stop was a few km from the H12 as I got a message from Penny stating that they were leaving Transport Dam and were heading towards Skukuza and then home to watch the rugby. I also got a message from my work colleague and they were at Lower Sabie for breakfast, but they were coming back up to Skukuza afterwards.
This left us a little confused about what to do next as I wasn’t going to sit at Skukuza for 2 hours waiting for a work colleague and we weren’t keen to head down towards Lower Sabie because we would miss Penny and Bobby then.
Penny and Bobby did mention that they had found a leopard on the S65 and we didn’t have a leopard today, so we decided to drive down the H1-1 as Penny and Bobby were heading up the H1-1, so we would pass each other on the road, then head up the S65 to the S1 and then return to Skukuza in time for my work colleague’s arrival.
Just before the hill down to De Laporte waterhole we spotted Penny and Bobby’s car heading our direction. They pulled off on the left and we pulled off on the right so the road was open between the 2 cars for people to pass through and we had a brief “catch up” conversion. After 10 minutes Penny and Bobby ducked off to watch the rugby at their place and we continued on.
At the bridge next to De Laporte waterhole we spotted a lioness cruising along in the bush next to the road, so I reversed while trying to take pics.

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I then looked in my rear view mirror and a massive bus was heading down the road at pace. The driver slowed at the last minute and stopped with his bus nearly touching my rear bumper and then he hooted for us to move which resulted in an instant head gasket explosion from me and a few hand signals out the car window. The lioness ducked during the commotion, but can someone please explain to me why a bus which is the same size as those massive Greyhound buses is permitted in Kruger?
We then moved on towards the S65 and the bus came past us at definitely way more than 50km/h and we watched as he drove through an impala herd that was grazing on either side of the road without slowing down. We all know that an impala is a doff thing with regards to traffic and that one could step into the road at any second, so only a madman or someone who knows nothing about Kruger and its animals would travel at that speed past impala on the edge of a road.
Penny and Bobby had described the rocks that they had seen the leopard on and we knew the exact spot which was around 4km from the south entrance, so my mild pelican evaporated as we got closer and as luck would have it, the leopard was still sleeping on the rock.

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While watching the leopard I got another WhatsApp from my work colleague and plans had changed again as they were now going to hire a car to drive from Kruger to Durban because they had too much stuff in their opinion to fit it in my car with all our kit. I wasn’t going to argue as it got us out of having to head back to Skukuza, so we could relax with the leopard a little longer.
We sat waiting for the leopard to wake up, but after half an hour with no movement we decided to turn and head for waffles and ice cream at Afsaal.
The H3 was fairly quiet again so we stopped for pics of a few different things.

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