Moremi GR - Day 3

Sunrise in the bush is always special

Although the park opens at 6am, we knew it would still be dark, but we wanted to be up and ready by that time just in case the lions that we’d heard far away in the night were closer to camp in the morning.

We ended up leaving about 6.15 am, still dark and with no sign of lion. But we did have an unusual sighting of a genet in a tree. An almost exclusively nocturnal creature, we only ever see him scavenging in campsites at night so it was great to see one in the “wild”.

3rd bridge campsite, still wild with ellies daily

We headed towards 4th Bridge and the Xakanaxa area but it seemed pretty quiet. Spotting a few ellies, we decided to have coffee with them.

With the car off we suddenly heard a lion roar and he didn’t seem too far away. We eventually found his tracks but by that time he had turned off the road and into the bush and we weren’t able to find him.

The trickiest sand is between 3rd bridge and Xaka

We spent the morning driving the many small roads around Xakanaxa - it would be so easy to get totally lost as there are no landmarks to follow so you become easily disoriented. Luckily we have the Tracks 4 Africa app to keep us on track and eventually made our way near to the Xakanaxa campsite.

Beautiful Xaka, lots of great game driving trails 

We were busy photographing some starlings bathing in a waterhole when we heard another lion roaring. This time it didn’t take too long to find him, especially when we spotted all the game drive vehicles clumped together - that can only mean cat.

We understand he is part of a 4 male coalition of Xakanaxa 

He was on the move and we were lucky to get a couple of shots of him before he disappeared into the bush. A few of the game drive vehicles followed him but it was across a river crossing and we’re not prepared to drive through water unless we have to so we left him and made our way towards the campsite instead.

Xakanaxa campsite, plenty of shade but a bit crowded 

Only a few meters on and more cars were stopped. More lions in the bush but extremely hard to see. Apparently lions had killed a kudu the previous night and were somewhere in the bush - 3 females and 8 cubs as well as the male lion that we had seen earlier.

River crossings are inevitable, this to Dead Tree Island

We caught a glimpse of ears and eventually one of the lions walked through the tall grass giving us a sighting, but with it now being mid morning and heating up we didn’t think the cats were going to be too active. They were probably just going to sleep off their meal in the shade somewhere so we decided to leave them and head to the campsite for a coffee and toilet break.

Xaka #8, not shade but great views

After a nice break and a few extra birds added to our list, we slowly meandered back to 3rd Bridge in time for lunch, catching a big herd of elephants and a pod of hippos on the way.

Lunch was spent in our campsite being entertained by the camp birds, especially the yellow billed hornbills, and a couple of elephants browsing right at our camp.

Folks were using old 4th bridge but I wouldn't, new 4th is down but there is a way around 

The evening drive was pretty quiet. We chased a tip from one of the game drive vehicles about a pride of 9 lions that are following a buffalo herd. We found the herd but not the lions unfortunately.

We did pass our neighbours who were very thankful to Dru for telling them about the wild dogs. They’d spent ages searching but had finally found the dogs. They estimated 22 adults and another 15 or so pups.

Red Lechwe, we have only seen it in Northern Botswana

The good thing for us was they had precise directions for us to get to the den so we had something to work with other than some vague directions about driving behind the baobab.

Dinner was to be a braai of pork chops and potatoes while also organizing our lunch for the next day so all that took a while, but we were still done around 9.30 pm and were able to have a last liqueur and hit the tent to have a good night’s sleep.

Or it would have been if we didn’t hear some noises from the bottom of our tent ladder. Put the torch on to find a hyena standing at the car with one of Dru’s slops in his mouth before walking off with it.

Hyena damage

With 3 more slops to potentially eat, we still didn’t want to get out the tent to rescue them so we went to sleep wondering if there would be any shoes left by morning.