What started out as a very quiet afternoon drive resulting in remembering that the bush is full of surprises?
We left the Lodge looking for Rain’s (female cheetah in Pilansberg) cubs that had recently moved on to Black Rhino. After about 2 hours of seeing very little, we decided that we should rather go into the wilderness area to find something before the sun faded. We head down the fence line towards Pannetjies, and we stopped to look at a couple of birds on the way. As we turn onto the road heading away from the fence line, something light crossing the road caught my eye.
With our luck that day I was thinking that it was perhaps a steenbok! As we got closer we were thrilled that it was a young male leopard. What a great surprise it was to us all, but unfortunately we only spent about 5 minutes with him before we lost him in the dense bush. With the adrenaline pumping, and excitement through the roof, we carried on and roughly 500m from where we lost the leopard we stumbled across 2 big male lions on a mission towards Pannetjies.
Can you believe how our luck had changed in 20 minutes? Happily we were able to spend a good 10 minutess with them before they also headed off into the thicket. Really buzzing, we then headed off to Pannetjies to see if a leopard or lion would grace us with their presence. Another surprise awaiting… a large herd of elephants were walking on the road towards the vehicle. It was totally unreal… and probably one of the most productive 45 minutes of my guiding career. What a life!
