Camping with Petronella ; KTP May 2016

[Lisbeth]

Lovely steenbokkies

The wind is not all gone, Debbie's skirt and hair are moving

[Mel]

Those steenboks are adorable.

[GavinW]

The Auob delivers!

We left Auchterlonie just after 11 in the morning and as planned we headed up north towards Kamqua

We were approaching Batulama waterhole when I noticed a vehicle stopped on the side of the road just around a bend.

Wondering as to why they had stopped, I was concentrating on the car ahead, when Debbie suddenly shouted “Leopard”

That woke me up and made me stop super fast

Sure enough, under a bush up on the left lay this lady:



Miera



We watched her for a while as she lay in the shade. She seemed pretty settled and after a bit FOMA set in and I wanted to know what the other car was watching.
I had tried flashing my lights to alert them of the leopard but they had not noticed, so after a bit I drove the 30 or so meters up to them

These vultures were on a gemsbok kill which had hardly been touched, and there were no other predators around





The Dutch couple in the other car were ecstatic at the prospect of a leopard sighting and we both reversed back to the leopard

We were not there for 5 minutes before she got off and disappeared over the ridge




Leaving us with a whole lot of questions:

Who killed the gemsbok?
Was it the leopard?
That’s a pretty big kill for a female leopard!
But then why was she so close to it and if it wasn’t her kill why wasn’t she on it?

Did she surprise the gemsbok in the windy conditions the previous evening, have her fill, and unable to store so large a meal in a tree, just stay in the vicinity?
I suppose we will never know, but we were totally stoked with the sighting

[Lisbeth]

Beautiful leopard and a lot of questions without an answer

[Mel]

Miera She's granted us quite a few nice sightings of her as well in the past. Unfortunately not lately,
but she's still one of my favourite leos.

[Alf]

So many lions

Wow enjoying the trip

[GavinW]

The Nossob delivers!

After leaving the vultures at Batulama, we carried on to Kamqua, and then back down to Twee Rivieren.

Along the way we saw all the usual suspects including these springbok with more babies




This Steenbok was in the dunes on the dune road before Twee Rivieren



At TR, they were about to start digging up the petrol station, and I was happy that we were still able to get petrol, which saved us from having to use our extra stock.
After doing all our domestic chores, recharging batteries etc we left to return to Rooiputs for our last evening there.

We were about 5 kilometres from camp when we suddenly saw a herd of springbok charging across the road and up into the dunes. One lamb had been left behind and Debbie joked “Mommy, mommy wait for me!” as the lamb rushed to catch up with the rest of the herd.

We hadn’t gone 100m before we saw what all the commotion was about.
A Cheetah, just off the road, holding a springbok lamb in its mouth. We must have missed the kill by less than a minute





The sighting was a bit frustrating as the cheetah was lying in some fairly thick foliage, which obscured our view of the actual kill to a large extent







We stayed with the kill for quite some time, as we were close to camp, we could afford to stay a bit longer than those cars which had to head back to TR, but eventually with about 20minutes left we had to leave the cheetah on her own.

The day’s sightings were however not over

A group of 3 bat eared foxes out foraging for their supper almost made us late for the “gate”







After a long day out, we relaxed in camp slowing starting to pack up camp in preparation for our move to Polentswa the next day, whilst enjoying another stunning African bushveld braai.

[Lisbeth]

Great battie photos; not easy to see them close up

Brilliant cheetah sighting

[Alf]

You had an amazing trip with special sightings

[Mel]

YAY, YAY and YAY! Just the other day I discovered a sighting of him from August last year.
Now we got a very recent sighting of Ekon So happy to see he's alive and well.

I assume that was just past Samevloeeing considering that you found him about 5 kays out of TR?