Up at 6.15 so we were ready for a light breakfast and 7.15 start. Our early day objective was to walk the Dassie (aka rock hyrax) Trail - 6.5kms. It was definitely warmer than yesterday, no frost, but we still needed jackets until the sun was properly up. The trail was challenging due to the fact it went across numerous smooth rocks and we had to cross several reasonably sized rocky tributaries - if we were lucky there was a bridge if not we had to leap from rock to rock....not always easy as I endeavoured to protect my camera and leap simultaneously!
Enroute we walked to the top of moon rock and by chance the moon was setting high in the sky behind it. We saw and heard lots of birds waking up including black eyed bulbul, cape sparrows, a black chested canary, red billed quelia and Burchell's coucal, we also saw tracks of the Hartman's zebra ( a sub species of the mountain zebra), giraffe and the rare cape clawless otter. Thanks to eagle eyed John we saw 5 giraffe from Moon Rock but a way off. En route back we saw a family of Dassies waking up and sunning themselves high on a rock - thus making the walk aptly named. We got back to our chalet just after 10.15 and relaxed until brunch at around 1130.
Today was the hottest yet so we actually took the bottoms off our convertible trousers and sat outside until going for a game drive through the park - leaving at 3ish.
While sitting outside I finally got a picture of an orange river white eye ( a sub species of the cape white eye,and only found here) which was flitting in the trees, a laughing dove which was on the ground pecking for food, red eyed bulbuls who were singing and flitting in the tree above, and pale winged starling one visited my sitting spot, while I found two singing in a tree after returning from speedily following a yellow mongoose which ran past; I just managed to photograph a rear profile as it disappeared from view!
On the drive the rocky scenery was stunning, we also had further glimpses of the orange river ravine - we could hear the water rushing over rapids and spied two African darters fishing in the water and a fish eagle on the ground in the bottom of the ravine, we then watched it ride the thermals to the top before disappearing from sight. On this journey we got eye level, but distant views, of the South African giraffe - paler in colour than other South African giraffe which is probably an adaptation to help with heat loss. Our sighting of the zebra was hard earnt - only after My brain had computed that I had seen stripes did I shout 'zebra' - so we reversed and found two family groups of about 6 zebras each in the distance - they were away off but easily seen with binoculars. These zebra are stockier than the plains (Burchell's)zebra and have true black and white stripes with no shadow brown stripe. The journey also revealed, a ground squirrel, mr and mrs klipspringer high on a rocky outcrop, a booted eagle with a slender mongoose close by and a large armoured cricket marching across the road. Finally,after the sunset and as we were heading out of the reserve, we saw 3 giraffe close up.....perhaps after following them all day they finally trusted us!
We were out of the park by 1830 and quickly back at the chalet. I had a lovely hot shower, John did some washing to keep his hand in, and Hein prepared another lovely dinner.