A clear starlight night meant it was a cool morning with a heavy dew but it warmed quickly to give us a really nice day. Dillon took us and Maureen, a regular lodge guest, on an easy walk in the valley. Ionna is like most teenagers allergic to walking but this was a good pace and she did well. The highlight was a baby leopard tortoise. We also saw rock hyrax on the drive down, cape batis, bush buck, impala, the kite spider and fresh leopard prints on the road. We were back for 9am as the archeologist was giving a brief lecture on the petroglyphs before brunch - Ionna struggled with it but did well to stay alert for hour, that said it was quite interesting given our recent trips to Peru and Chile - you could see definite similarities.
After brunch we had a nice relax until late afternoon when Dillon took us to the Conservation village to meet Tara, the head researcher who gave us a lecture on the leopard research programme - it was really interesting. The main objective is to understand the leopard movements in the area and to use the data to work with the local farmers so they call first when they have a problem instead of resorting to shooting them - green shoots are emerging which is positive. Importantly the profits from On Track safaris are ploughed back into the research which is a fantastic way to run a travel company if you can. We have already been thinking about where to put our camera traps; we position them tomorrow and then wait to see what we have caught when we return in 8 days time.
On our way back to the Lodge we passed Becky and Joe - it was their night off and they were off for a barbecue with Tara and the intern, Dan.