Africa Wild

yes, interesting to know what did you find on the other side

Wait, wait, wait... the Mata gate is now closed as well
Also, it looks like they build something new there. Incredible that things sometimes can even be finished within less than a year

Yep: What did you buy

Richprins wrote:Interesting outing...so you visited two Sadec countries!

Well, technically we visited three, we entered a couple o km inside Botswana to see Ta Shebube´s Rooiputs Lodge but there´s no border there and we didn´t even leave the car.

It was funny to go and buy dinner in a different country but there wasn´t much choice, we bought springbock boerewors and lamb chops.

pedro maia wrote:It was funny to go and buy dinner in a different country but there wasn´t much choice, we bought springbock boerewors and lamb chops.

like in Mata Mata, Nossob and TR
along the Dry Nossob river bed... we are often in the Botswana

We left Mata Mata to make the 120km back to the park gate at Twee Rivieren, once again I couldn´t resist to take a few pictures of the road and the landscape. Soon after leaving Mata Mata a car made us signs with the headlights and the very gentle couple inside told us that there was a cheetah moving along the left side of the road 3,1km from where we were (perfectly detailed information), we thanked them and moved away at 50km/h and, right according to the information, there it was, close to the road and moving south, this beautiful cheetah that we found out it is Corinne( Mel).

Gorgeous animal, really athletic and elegant ,a true sprinter. There was only another car nearby (then another one after we warned another family with our headlights) and we watch and slowly moved along Corinne, who had a goal, a herd of springboks grazing several hundreds of meters ahead, in the middle of the river bed. Corinne´s task wasn´t an easy one, there was a lot of open terrain between her and the herd so she moved slowly, trying to blend with the grass.

Then she sat for a bit to assess the situation

And decided to cross to the other bank, to the dune, but that had to be done in the open By then the springboks were still quite far from Corinne but either they spotted her or sensed that there was danger because one of them was a little apart from the others, with it´s head up in Corinne´s direction, without moving.

In the meantime we had a great (although brief) moment when we were watching Corinne already in the dune and in the river bed a scrub hare passed running for it´s life with two jackals running behind it, suddenly the hare turned to the dune and the jackals didn´t even notice that and kept running, but it was too quick so we don´t have pictures of that pursuit.

By then Corinne was moving along the dune, as stealthy as possible. From time to time we lost her sight, then saw her again, until she sat, then laid down, and stopped moving.

We waited for a good while but it became clear that there was probably going to be some action but it was
going to take time, Corinne was still far from the springboks and we had all the Auob road ahead of us, if we were staying at Mata Mata we would have return later but it wasn´t the case so we had to leave the scene.

It was, nevertheless, one of the best moments of the trip.

nan wrote:

pedro maia wrote:It was funny to go and buy dinner in a different country but there wasn´t much choice, we bought springbock boerewors and lamb chops.

like in Mata Mata, Nossob and TR
along the Dry Nossob river bed... we are often in the Botswana

Didn´t know that nan.