This past week I have had two amazing sightings that I will always remember! On Sunday we decided to jump into the car and head to Manyeleti (a neighboring game reserve) for a day. Our guide Sean worked there for some years and said it was his preference over Kruger because there aren’t as many annoying tourist around to ruin a good sighting. When we arrived we were disappointed in the lack of animals we saw! A few birds, impala, kudu, zebra and wildebeest. After 3 hours we decided to leave and go to Kruger for the rest of the day to see some action. Just as we were headed out I spotted the most beautiful leopard and without hesitation yelled to the driver to stop the vehicle. Speechless I pointed out behind us to the left. I couldn’t believe I had actually finally spotted a leopard , which is extremely difficult because the are so elusive , perfectly camouflaged and mainly only come out during the night. We stopped the car and turned off the engine so we wouldn’t disturb it. The leopard stopped dead in its tracks and just starred at us for what seemed like seconds. we managed to get a few good shots before it continued walking. Just when the leopard had stepped on a grassy patch two little black birds flew out from the patch and startled the leopard who ran towards the direction of our car. Stunned, I quickly rolled up my window as quickly as possible! The leopard is one of the most dangerous cats to come into contact with ( just a couple days ago 2 people were killed by one leopard in Kruger Park) the leopard is also the only cat that you should not make direct eye contact with!! She ran behind our car and into the bush where she quickly disappeared. I was amazed by how quickly her spots blended into the dead grass! We were all really excited and didn’t want to just drive away especially since we knew she was just right next to us, but we had to go because we no longer had a good visual. I was so thrilled to have spotted this , since I always nag on about spotting a leopard! since that day I spotted a total of 8 in the whole year!
The other amazing sighting was when we went to the waterhole behind the college like we normally did on drives and witnessed around a thousand Cape buffalo crossing over the hill and into our direction to get some water. This was an incredible sight! Never before have I seen such a large amount of any animal before in my life! I could feel the ground shaking as they ran towards the water in complete mayhem! within minutes they covered the whole land and it became impossible to count them. The family of hippos that were in the water were not happy with this and let the buffalo know this by mock charging them in the water. The buffalo got so close to the hippo at one point that it forced the hippo to lunge out of water and take a snip at the Buffalo’s side. It was so intense and overwhelming. We were in a safe distance for most of the time, until the end when they had finished drinking. They came up in our direction from both sides and within minutes surrounded us! This made us all very nervous because of the buffaloes dangerous and unpredictable nature ,but luckily there was no hostility and we gazed in awe as they walked within feet of our two vehicles before heading off into the bush!
- drinking from burrow pit
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