The day started with our normal trip across the river; the early morning light on the white fronted beeater colonies (today's picture) was lovely. The drive today was particularly quiet - no elephant or giraffe - no lion but had they walked through and sent everything diving for cover? We did however see a rare swallow tailed beeater, a martial eagle and a shikra. A baby hippo welfare check showed it was still OK.
This afternoon we went for a walk and were joined by a South African couple, who live in Australia. We watched a really chilled group of giraffe and glimpsed an elephant who appeared then disappeared!
When we got back to jeep and set off we became aware of a gaggle of jeeps watching something - then as predicted a leopard appeared walking through the area totally unfased by the watchers and their vehicles. We then seemed to travel quite quickly - why - surprise - as we arrived at the lake the sun was setting, the manager, Jake, had brought the team out and set up for champagne sundowners.....a beautiful end to the day in a lovely spot. Champagne drunk nibbles nibbled we continued with our night drive and saw genets, scrub hares, a Mozambique nightjar and a beautiful civet - our first this trip. When we returned to the boat we found a reoccurrence of last nights problems - the team with the sundowner equipment had not got back to base and were stuck as they couldn't get it started. Axon was in the other safari vehicle- but when he arrived he again fixed it !
We all got back and dinner hadn't spoilt....thankfully.