5th October Skukuza
We woke to another sunny day, but we were a little late this morning and only left camp at around 6:30am.
On this trip we found that it was hectically busy traffic wise around Skukuza and down towards Lower Sabie, especially after 9am when day visitor numbers started to peak, and since we were a little later today, some of the Kruger Gate traffic was already arriving at the Skukuza 4 way stop, so the plan was to head straight up the H1-2 to Tshokwane to escape some of the school holiday crowd and then reassess from there.
We 1st did a small detour around alpha loop which produced a hyena sleeping, but nothing much else.
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Just after the Sand River an OSV driver, and us traveling behind him, spotted a leopard about 1m off the road and we both stopped at the same time and then slowly approached.
The leopard was on the Cow’s side, so she grabbed the camera and started taking pics, but it was rather nervous and within 10 seconds it started to move deeper into the bush. We tried to follow the leopard movements while moving slowly along the road, but the bush was too dense and we lost sight of it. I checked on the OSV and it was clear that they had also lost the leopard, so I then took the camera from the Cow to check the pics out as I expected some nice close-ups, but all were badly blurred, so I started chirping
“WTF, why are all the pics blurred”
The Cow instantly got defensive
“I don’t know, I just took pics, it’s the camera’s fault!”
I then realised that I had put the camera into auto mode the previous evening for some pics after dark and hadn’t changed it back to AV mode where only 1 central focus point has been selected. In auto mode numerous focus points are active, so the bush next to the leopard was perfectly in focus but not the leopard.
“Do you understand that the camera indicates which points are in focus?”
“No, I just push the button! It’s a crap camera!”
Another mini domestic then started, but the below is the best of the pics we have of the sighting and unfortunately, it’s as the leopard was walking away.
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The Cow recovered before our next stop, Leeupan, and we parked off there for 15 minutes watching ellies come and go.
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The rest of the drive to Tshokwane produced the odd usual sighting, but nothing that we took pics of. The sighting board at Tshokwane also didn’t indicate much, even though one can’t trust them anyway, so we purchased some cooldrinks and the negotiation started of what to do next.
I had promised a trip to the Kruger Station restaurant for a waffle, as although we have walked through the restaurant numerous times since the renovations, it’s rather expensive in our Toti opinion, so we had never eaten there, but we heard that the waffles are good and at least it’s an item that isn’t going to break the bank, so we decided to head up to Mazithi Dam 12km north of Tshokwane and then turn and head back to Skukuza.
About 3km north of Tshokwane we hit a timing luck again as a leopard appeared in the distance and then minutes later started walking straight towards us, so my teeth were hanging out bigtime.
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but quite funny
How is it possible to enjoy a sighting with lots of OSVs with loud-speaking passengers around
It's my favourite animal, Albert loves wild dogs and the Cow just loves all animals 
![[O]](./images/smilies/camera.gif "Photo"){kind=small}
He is not only ugly, he is also old. Maybe that explains the porcupines... they are slow and the other animals avoid them, for obvious reasons 