In the past week I have had two great sightings that I will always remember! First off on Sunday we decided to jump into the car and head to Manyeleti a neighboring game reserve. 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, so we went for a day trip! when we got there we were disappointed in the lack of animals we saw, just a few birds, impala, kudu, zebra and wildebeest. After 3 hours we decided to get out of there and hit 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 even processing it completely i yelled stop, stop, stop , stop , stop no one knew what I was yelling on about, all I could manage to do was point back behind us on the left. I couldn’t believe I had actually finally spotted a leopard , which is extremely hard to do because the are so rare and elusive( not to mention those coat patterns blending in perfectly. 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 on its journey. Just when the leopard had stepped on a grassy patch two little black birds flew out from the patch and startled the leopard ( which was a juvenille act) so much that it started to run towards the direction of our car. I decided to take no chances and rolled up my window as quickly as possible! The leopard is one of the most dangerous cats to come into contact with ( a couple days ago 2 people were killed by one leopard in Kruger) the leopard is also the only cat that you can not make direct eye contact with when confronted 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 grasses! We were all really excited and didn’twant 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 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! Since that first leopard spot I didnt really have anymore challenges as far as spotting went, so focused on caracal and aardvark lol 
Another amazing sighting was a few days ago, when we went to the waterhole behind the college and witnessed around a thousand Cape buffalo crossing over the hill and into our direction to get some water from our burrow pit! it was amazing ! Never before have I seen such a large amount of any animal before in my life! you could literally feel the ground shaking! within minutes they covered the whole land and it became impossible to count them. they walked with a steady pace until the water was visible. They started to run to the water to get a chance to drink. 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 which was something ive also never seen before either. 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! The thing that makes buffalo so dangerous is how unpredictable they are and at any minute could lose their composure and charge, leading all the others to do the same, but luckily there was no hostility and I gazed in awe as they walked within feet of our two vehicles before headeding off into the bush!
- drinking from burrow pit
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