Moremi GR - Day 7

African Jacana

A 6am start and we were out before anyone else in the dark in the hopes of catching something on the road but it was not to be. The floodplain was devoid of cats; the only spoor we could fine was hyena but even they were hiding from us.

We decided to head towards the Magotho area of Moremi even though we hadn’t found the lions there the previous day.  This time though our luck paid off and we finally found a couple of lions after a couple of hours searching.

The Impala knew the Lions were around but hadn't seem them yet

It was a male and a female so we assumed that it could be a mating couple. Although the male was awake the lioness was out for the count making us think that they may be at the end of the mating, so we settled in to wait and see if we were right.

Took us a while to find a good lion sighting and this was special

We were amused to see a oblivious herd of impala walking towards the lions, until the male put his head up and set off the alarm calls of the herd.

Still, the lions hardly reacted and soon we were proven right when the male got to mate with the female although she didn’t seem too interested.

Happy with finally catching some lions in good light we headed back to our camp to speak to the camp attendant about staying another night. She can only check if there are any cancellations on the day so we needed to wait until 11am to find out.

That's his happy face

We had left our stuff out at the camp and were back just after 10 am to pack it away but there was already a car parked there waiting to take our spot. Usually it’s check out at 10 and check in at 2pm so these guys were a bit enthusiastic about getting their site. Luckily our camp is quick to pack and we were out in about 15 minutes where it was now a waiting game to see if we would have a site at Khwai for the night.

An hour and a half waiting only to find out they were full for the night so we had to make another plan.

Common Waterbuck

We had already discussed the different options from heading out to Gweta to see the meerkats to looking for camping at Xakanaxa. In the end we settled on camping at South Gate for the night as we felt that they would have availability and if not, we could head out to Maun, so we hit the 30km service road we’d done a couple of days ago and made it back to South Gate.

Elephant proof solar panel

As expected, they had campsites open so we booked in there and headed to our camp for lunch. It’s a pretty ugly camp as it borders the staff village but we did have a small herd of elephants drinking from a leaking pipe near to us, so at least we had some entertainment during lunch.

South Gate, not the best campsite but easily the best for animals in the camp 

We figured that since we were up this side that we would chase up the dogs again and see if we could catch the greeting ceremony again, so after lunch we hit the road down to Xini Lagoon.

We stopped to talk to a game drive vehicle on the way and he gave us bad news that the wild dog den had been attacked and at least one pup was dead but wasn’t sure about how many had been killed. They saw that some had been moved to another den site but had seen at least a dozen pups around so they weren’t all gone.

Pups checking out a Vulture eating a pup

The really interesting news was that they had seen 2 leopards together. We had some vague directions but it was going to be a needle in a haystack search for us.

Still, we were up for the challenge and a change of plan to make the leopards the first priority.

However an hour later and still not even close to figuring out where these elusive leopards were and we headed to the dogs to see if we could catch them.

The models of the wild, zebs are just photogenic

There was a dead pup being eaten by the vultures just outside the den site which was just too sad to photograph but the adults were there lying in the shade and we could hear noise from the den so we knew at least some of the pups were there. It was just a waiting game now.

And this time the waiting didn’t pay off. Three dogs hadn’t moved by the time we decided it was time to move so we said goodbye to the dogs and started the search for the leopards again.

But with little to go on it was a fruitless venture and by closing time we were back in the campsite and set up camp.

It was extremely annoying to see that despite having 12 campsites and only 3 campers they had herded us all together right next to the staff village. There were so many better options that to be subjected to the staff village voices, music and generator noise; it was pretty pathetic.

Luckily we were entertained by not one but 4 honey badgers attacking the bin because they haven’t badger proofed them. And a hyena came to drink at the leaking water pipe in the evening.

The lions started roaring not long after we arrived and once the generator switched off we were able to enjoy our last night in the bush at least sounding like the bush.