We arrived at Lower Sabie earlier than expected even though we had spent a fair amount of time with the lions, so I was in no rush to continue, therefore the clan decided it was a good opportunity to wander at length around the shop which resulted in me walking between the sighting board and the view around 10 times until finally they made their way into the Mugg & Bean queue.
We found a table which was the furthest away from the normal morning breakfast gang and chowed. I tried to force myself to eat slowly to pass the time but found myself pacing around between the walkway to the tents and our table until the clan finally finished. We then patrolled around looking for the local barn owl, then a tour of the tented section and then back to the sighting board and there didn’t seem to be much on the go which had me dreaming of the good old days with the 12pm book in.
It was now only around 11am and we had run out of ideas of things to do around camp, so decided to head 10km up the road to the causeway and back.
The drive up produced a large spread out traffic jam just before Lubyelubye and the lion pride had cruised across the river and they were plotting a buffalo herd which was trying to get down to the Sabie river. We checked them out a little in the binoculars and it didn’t look like there was going to be any immediate action and they were a very long way off so we moved on.
The S79 local leopard wasn’t around so we turned to head slowly back, however a few km later encountered a massive traffic jam.
“#$^*, this wasn’t here on the way up, how can it build so quickly?”
After 15 minutes we still hadn’t advanced more than 2m, so I was losing it and seconds later 2 OSV’s jumped the queue and roared up straight into the stationary oncoming lane causing a total grid lock.
This was too much for me “Hey, piss off, there’s a queue trying to get through here, you lot think you own the place, etc, etc.”
By this stage the Cow and clan had red faces from embarrassment, but the 2 OSV drivers had heard me and they were now sheepishly asking other cars for a gap so they could get out.
Eventually cars moved around enough to let the OSV’s through and this left a hole in the traffic jam, so I took the gap, but then I hit a wobble because as we neared the centre of the jam the rats shouted “leopard!”
After the scene I had made I couldn’t now stop and block any traffic so slowed to a snail’s pace and blurted
“There! Quickly snap pics!”
I pulled over up the road to see who had gotten a pic and I was horrified to see only 1 clear pic and the leopard’s head was cut off, but I could also see that the Cow was flustered, hot, red faced and ready for a scrap, so for once my brain worked before my mouth and I kept quiet.
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Towards the end of the massive jam we spotted Penny so stopped to compare our shock at the number of cars. I advised Penny that we weren’t going to hang around in this crowd and were going to take a short drive up the H10 to look for the cheetah locals as the sighting board indicated that someone had spotted them earlier.
I can’t remember how far up the H10 the cheetahs were but it wasn’t far as the S128 south entrance was just down the road.
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It was difficult to spot the cheetah under the bush because one had to be parked south or north of the bush they were under to see them, but if you went closer to the bush you couldn’t see them.
Seconds later an overexcited visitor who didn’t want to miss out pulled almost into the bush which made the 3 sub adult cheetahs nervous and they jumped up and started off.
I was caught by surprise so there was some frantic camera juggling going on and then the mother cheetah also jumped up resulting in an initial burst of blurred pics and some choice words followed by the Cow’s “bad language” greasing. Fortunately the cheetah weren’t in a rush so the blood had time to drain and my head cleared.
The cheetahs were moving along next to the road so I followed along in reverse, stopping at times for pics.
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The mother cheetah was around 1m from the road edge and some chop drove right on top of her, so she tried to jog around the front of the chop’s car and he drove forward blocking her again.
I was now going to get another bad language greasing but didn’t care “She wants to cross you $$**&$#......##$*”
It was too late and the chop did it a 3rd time resulting in the cheetahs taking off northwards to where they had come from and then we spotted them sprinting across the road behind the last approaching car.
Seconds later I heard Penny as they had arrived at some stage during this process, so we started chatting about the sighting as if it was over, but the cheetahs were heading back towards us, therefore our conversion paused for a few seconds, however it was soon clear that they were going to disappear diagonally deeper into the bush.
Bobby had a theory that they would show up on the S128 and it made sense, but it was now after 1pm and we were keen to get into our unit and cool off a little as none of us felt well, so we said cheers and agreed that we would bump into each other again on the trip. (I later found out that the cheetahs did show up on the S128).
Our Lower Sabie check in went smoothly and we scored the units we had asked for so I was happy to just spend the afternoon on the veranda, but at around 5pm the rats wanted to take a trip up to Lubyelubye to see if the pride was around, however 2 teenage ellies entertained us for 10 minutes and the Lubyelubye pride were missing, however 200m up the road a male lion was checking the scene out.
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To be continued
But you at least saw a leopard and had a great cheetah sighting! 
Traffic 
Ya, the mood wasn't fantastic in the car due to the "flu" so the fuse was very short 
I wish people would leave a section of road open at sightings so that traffic can still flow slowly