I'm going to loose track of days if I'm not careful, so....
Fri 21st June
We were up nice and early for our first full day in the park. By the time we got to Crocodile Bridge gate it was still very dark, but the queues were building. We had decided to see what it was like without a pre-booking, which in hindsight was a bad move. The big queue of cars with pre-bookings were let in first and we had to sit for quite some time. Fortunately we were one of the first non-pre-booking vehicles to be allowed in, and we were processed quickly at reception.
Our aim was to head up to Skukuza for lunch via Lower Sabie, so our first stop would be where the leopards had been seen the day before at the junction of the H4-2 and S130. The youngster was apparently being seen from time to time running between bushes, but despite there initially not being too many cars at the place we just couldn't get any kind of view
After waiting for too long the leopards moved totally out of sight which had me in a grumpy mood as we had wasted a fair amount of time at the non-sighting
Continuing on with our original plan we went up the S130, then across to Duke waterhole and up the last part of the S28 before re-joining the tar up to Lower Sabie. The S130 was quiet, but we found some zebra attempting to drink at the muddy waterhole at the northern end of the road
There were a few usuals around Duke, but a lump in a tree turned out to be a Verreaux's eagle-owl
Along the S28 some vultures were warming up in the sunshine
One of them was a lappet-faced variety which I don't think we have seen before
On the H4-2 we found a vehicle reversing, and after chatting to the driver it seemed we had just missed out on another leopard sighting
In fairness they had only seen it for a split second before it dashed into cover so we hadn't missed too much
Along the Sabie there was a big herd of buffalo drinking
We stopped at the Lower Sabie bridge and whilst watching some hippo realised this huge monitor was lying in the sun just below the car doors
It made for some good close-ups
In the distance we saw a martial eagle, but it was a long way off
We stopped at Lower Sabie for some much needed coffee and hot chocolate. We found the service there to be very good most of the time despite the swell of visitors over the holidays. Our car had accumulated some serious dust already, so we decided to add some assistance in finding cats
Little did we realise at the time how accurate the directions were
But you still had some nice sightings. 
