Our guests were only staying for 1 night and myself and Steven (my tracker) were under a little bit of pressure to find them the animals that they wanted to see.

We started by looking for some elephants and went to the area were they were last seen on the morning safari. We found some nice fresh sign of these big animals, dung and some fresh tracks. Lucky for us we found them not to long after we had found the signs.
It was a very nice sighting, a big heard of the elephants crossing the round in front of us along with some young ones.

After that we took a bit of a break and stopped for some drinks on one of the dams in the area, watching the sun set and hearing the guests talking about how awesome the elephants were.

After the drinks stop we headed to a dam; a pride of lions was seen in the morning heading in the direction of this dam, in the hope to relocate the lions. It was a very hot day and myself and Steven thought that they might drink some water there.

When we reached the dam there was a big herd of buffalo busy drinking water. I turned my vehicle a little bit more to the side so my guests could see it nicely when Steven said that there was something on the other side of the dam that looked like a cat. Our first instinct was that it was the lions, but we were surprised when we got closer. It was not the lions but a male leopard lying on a termite mound looking at the buffalo.

The leopard was very relaxed and gave us the chance to get within a few meters of him.

And just my luck this was one of the few days that I left my camera at home. But it was still amazing to see this magnificent cat.

Stefan de Weerd – Kapama River Lodge
26/01/2013