Only a night on the Chobe River so we packed up our tents as the resident warthogs wandered through the campsite and the vervet monkeys tried to ransack the rubbish bin and steal anything they could out of the cars.

From here we headed deeper into Chobe National Park, leaving the bitumen and again tackling the dirt and the deep sand. At Savuti, we entered the campground, another with an elephant-proof ablutions block, and set up for two nights. Chris, who was our guide through southern Botswana, turned up for this second part of our exploration of the country with his safari truck.

My one (well, one of many) thing to see this trip was what we had failed to see in the four months of the last trip - a leopard. Chris came up trumps: a huge, powerfully-built, magnificent male leopard lying under a tree having apparently satisfied himself with a recent meal of baby zebra. He tolerated us being only a car length away but snarled and showed very big teeth if any of us made too quick a move or stood up in the truck. One big tick! He was beautiful!

We continued with game drives early in the morning and towards dusk, traversing just about every track in the area. Chris had heard of a Kudu kill by a lion the day before in a dry part of the riverbed. We parked up close-by to see if the lion returned or if hyenas or other scavengers came by. We had a great show by the white-backed vultures and marabou storks but unfortunately no other larger animals came by.

Later, on an evening game drive, we saw a female leopard out on a hunt with her cubs probably in the vicinity. We watched her for a while as she took a great interest in a lone impala. Suddenly without warning she sprinted back the way she had come. Painted Dogs, or Wild Dogs, had arrived and the cubs would be no match for a pack on the hunt.