Sadly it was departure day - after finishing our packing, a full cooked breakfast rather than our normal porridge and saying our goodbyes we headed off for a final game drive before going to Mana Pools airstrip. The plane was already there when we arrived - they had come out with a spare pilot and engineer to fix another defunct plane on the ground - sadly they couldn't fix it so we had two additional passengers on the return trip - they would return tomorrow wi...

Today we set off determined to find the lion - for the last few days they had been seen in the area of the BBC campsite - so named as its where the BBC had their base for two years while filming in the park. While driving along, and not far from the campsite, Doug found a really fresh lion track so we parked the jeep and he started following the tracks. It was interesting watching him find exactly where they went - he had a thin stick in his hand - which he used...

This morning we headed off in the vehicle first for a predator check - we looked for the wild dogs who we thought had moved their puppies due to the hyena presence - we found the tracks where they crossed the road but not them. The lions were quiet overnight and remained elusive. We parked the vehicle around 8am, had a mug of tea ( a rooibos teabag - not revolting but not great!), we then walked back to camp - with Humphrey retrieving the jeep later. We saw th...

I didn't sleep much past 4am - the hippos were making lots of noise and added to this I could hear lion, hyena and an early hadeda ibis calling followed shortly after by a turtle dove - so I lay there listening until our wake up call and the water arrived in our wash basins. During breakfast we could see impala running - clearly unsettled by something - probably the lions as that's where we heard them. We set off for our walk to Long Pan in beautiful soft orang...

We had an short game drive to check on the activity overnight - there had been little noise by the pan and there were no signs of the lions from last night. We found our lions from yesterday morning who looked much cleaner - the carcass was definitely much 'wiffier' and we needed to sniff wild basil in its vicinity - although they visited it they didn't eat - perhaps finally giving it to the flys! I did get a lovely photo of the female who came close to the jeep...