Wow…what a night…the wind really came up..the ill-fitting door banged into its frame every few seconds, along with a lot of other bangs. At day break it was evident what the other bangs were…within our wire mesh enclosed veranda the chairs and bin had been blown around, a tree in front of our chalet had lost a large branch and section of its trunk, several people were chatting to Park staff about the damage to their chalet/huts, bin had flown everywhere leaving only their lids anchored to the ground…to put some it up there was a right mess everywhere…we were extremely grateful that both our car and our hut had escaped damage.

The wind had dropped considerably by morning and although it was a cold day, 18 degrees Celsius, we were ready for more game viewing. After our, now usual two yogurts for, breakfast John loaded the car. Bless him he has dome all the fetching and carrying…..even when he’s on holiday his packhorse duties continue….

Off we went, we were moving on to Shingwedzi Camp, taking the main tar road north. We hadn’t expected to see a great deal because of the dry run we had had from Satara to Letaba….we were pleasantly surprised…Mother Nature likes to keep life interesting. John decided he was going to anticipate Giraffe as the first spot of the morning and I selected elephant…. We were both wrong!!! Just outside the Letaba camp gates 30 seconds after leaving was a largish troop of banded mongoose.

We continued on our way and guess what our next spot was? ……An elephant, in fact two….much to Johns annoyance as that put me at 4:1 up…..yes I did gloat…we are very competitive 🤣🤣🤣🤣 However just a short while after this we did see a giraffe.

In fact we saw pockets of wildlife for most of the trip. The landscape was once again different. Lots of quite thick dry bushes right up to the roadside. Quite often a movement would take us by surprise…..a large herd of elephant were right next to the road and we only noticed them at the last minute.

We stopped for various sightings along the way., although the photography was not easy through the more dense bush.

After a couple of hours the landscape changed again and we were back to anthills….we came to the conclusion that as the anthills were in very dry areas this was why we didn’t see much wildlife around them…..it didn’t stop us from looking.

Today could quite easily been called The Day of the Waterbuck. As we continued north and the landscape changed again saw some lovely small herds.

What seemed to be a dried rivermectin had some quite big pockets of water in it. These areas were love oasis and we saw a far denser population of impalas, zebra, wildebeest, waterbuck and elephant around them.

About 109 kms- 3.5 hours drive with stops for wildlife sightings, we arrived at Shingwedzi camp. We booked in and were allocated chalet A6, which was near reception, the shop and the restaurant. Unfortunately there was no room on the sunset drive so we booked for the following night.

Our chalet was very pleasant…a little old style but spacious with a kitchen on its veranda, the fridge was inside …everything seemed to work although we certainly didn’t need the air conditioner…..infact I had put on the nice scarf John had bought be and he had kept the car window closed for much of the trip. The temperature had risen to 20 degrees for about an hour before dropping back to 17/18 degrees. We rested up in the chalet for a couple of hours.

At 4.pm we headed out of the camps back gate to drive down to the dam along the riverside. We hadn’t gone far when a vehicle infront of us blocked the road giving a Safari vehicle instructions to somewhere. The Safari vehicle sped off I. The direction we had come from so we pulled alongside the car in front and asked him if he had any info…he kindly told us he had seen 20 lions at the side of the S53 river loop. He told us how to get there and said it was about 10 minutes away. We spun the car around and headed after the Safari vehicle. 10 minutes was an understatement…after 20 minutes we were wondering if we’d been sent on a wild goose chase… we stopped to view a large herd of buffalo.

Where there’s buffalo there are often lions. It is a lions choice of food because they are big and will feed a full pride of lions. In fact lions have been known to follow a herd of buffalo for a month or until the buffalo wander out of the lions territory into another lions territory. The lions will hunt them every few days, The size of the pride determines how often they need to make a kill, the bigger the pride the more mouths they need to feed, the more often they need to hunt.

So we continued up the tar in the direction the Safari vehicle had gone. It was by now out of sight and our rather ancient Kruger map didn’t have the S53 marked on it. We don’t speed in Kruger the speed limit on the tar roads is 50km and on the dirt 40km. We usually do 45km on the tar as it’s a speed you can still spot at. Thankfully we kept to our self regulated speed because not long after the buffalo a policewoman was stood at the side of the road with a speed camera, an armed ranger guarded her and the vehicle was well hidden in the bush…..we passed without incident…however the car behind which had been haring down on us was stopped….a lesson to be learnt always stick to the speed limit or you can be fined, removed from the park and refused entry again….its really not worth speeding not just for the sake of the animals.

Just after the speed cop was a right turning yeah!!! The S53 a 2km loop. After about 1 km we came across the Safari vehicle and 3 other cars and a motorhome…under the bushes to 5he right were a large pride of lions sleeping. They were spread around under a variety of bushes, so everyone could get a view. A lovely sight…there were some adolescent cubs and lots of lionesses…we counted 11 in total.

The Safari vehicle didn’t watch for long before moving off, which meant we could get closer.

It’s always such a wonderful sight seeing the big cats in their totally natural environment. They all had big rounded bellies, so they had obviously eaten recently.

What joy. After watching for about 15 minutes we decided to complete the loop and head on back along the tar as we had no idea how long it would take us and it was already quite dark even though it was only just after 5pm.

We got back to camp at 5.45pm. Our days wildlife count was 99+ impala, 1 squirrel, 11 banded mongoose, 24 Guinea fowl, 7 yellow billed hornbill, 1 red billed hornbill, 1 crested barbet, 63 waterbuck, 19 elephant, 5 kudu, 13 giraffe, 29 wildebeest, 1 grey heron, 1 white stork, 2 nyala, 2 yellow billed stork, 36 zebra, 36 buffalo, 8 spurrfowl, 11 lion, 3 Chacma baboons, 16 Malibu storks…..extremely good for what we thought was going to be a pretty dry day for wildlife viewing.

We decided to eat in the restaurant because it seemed chilly outside and it was still a little windy…I don’t like braiis in the wind as I am frightened a spark may be caught on the chalets thatched roofs. We both decided to have T-bone steaks because it came with vegetables…we seem to have missed out on vegetables for quite a few days….unfortunatly when it arrived we were told they hadn’t got any vegetables so it just came with chips…..hey ho we tried.

We had a couple of games of cards and retired to bed early…….no need for the aircon tonight.