Wednesday August 21, 2019
Our day started with another 5:30 am wake up call, and we were back on the Land Rover at 6 am. This morning we began our game drive by looking for a pair of lions that had moved through the Hamilton’s grounds overnight, and we found them very quickly.
The night guard had spotted them and passed the information on to our guide.
It was actually a male accompanied by two females. The male was lying flat on the ground, and it did not appear that we would get to see him very well – but Darryl had a few tricks up his sleeve and was able to read his body language, and encouraged us to stick around. Eventually, not only did he sit up, but he also roared and then got up and crossed the road. So all in all, it was a great sighting.
We then stopped in to see a dead rhino – he was taken down a couple of days ago by a pack of hyenas. This was pretty sad to see, given the struggles the rhino population is already facing. There is a rhino poached from Kruger every day, and a significant effort to curb poaching – we saw multiple anti-poaching patrols during our stay. Anyway, I was surprised to hear that hyenas were capable of killing a rhino.
Back at Hamilton’s, we had another huge breakfast, and then had the day at leisure.
There was an enormous amount of wildlife that passed through camp down at the water hole, and being in Tent 1 and Tent 2, we had the prime view.
We spent all day watching cape buffalo, dozens of elephants, hundreds of impalas, a jackal, zebras, giraffes, etc. all come and drink.
We also all had showers in the outdoor showers attached to our tents, and had great wildlife sightings even while showering!
Lunch was a big fancy affair, and then before we knew it, it was time for our afternoon game drive.
For this drive, we were on our own with Darryl. We spent the first half of the drive searching for cheetahs, but came up empty handed. We did see three different kinds of mongooses, and another genet and another civet, same as last night.
We saw the same three lions that we saw this morning, in the same spots; and then we went over to check out the old cape buffalo kill.
It was surrounded by lions, I think 8 in all, including a new male we hadn’t seen before.
It was a bit spooky seeing them all in the dark, and they were circling our truck, which was a bit unnerving!
There were also some hyenas also close by. So even though we missed out on the cheetahs, it was still a great drive overall.
Back at camp, we had another huge dinner, pork belly (for three of us) followed by sticky toffee pudding, and then called it a night – getting to bed a bit earlier than we did last night.
Good thing too, as we had thought we’d have naps today, but nobody was able to tear themselves away from the watering hole for that long.
Cook Family Travels 