Mabusehube NP - Day 4

A campsite full of wildflowers

A good nights sleep with no roaring heard, and we were out again at 5.30am. Straight to the waterhole but there was no sign of the lions. After the storm of last evening, it would be understandable if they had run a mile. We checked the old scout camp where the youngsters had come from last time but also no tracks to be seen. 

The waterhole full after the rains

Back to the campsites to check for more tracks and lo and behold, we found lion tracks at the next campsite. It seemed like the same we’d seen a couple of days ago of a lioness. With cubs. They’d come out the same place, gone into the camp and then disappeared again - most perplexing. More driving gave us more lion tracks but no sighting of lions. 

Black-backed jackals on the pan

We even saw leopard spoor going between the 2 campsites, obviously doing her nightly rounds when everyone is asleep. So lots of tracks but no sightings with the exception of a brown hyena on the pan, unfortunately a bit too far to photograph nicely. We decided to detour to Khiding Pan but beside the resident springbok herd, there wasn’t too much so we stopped at one the campsites to have a mid morning snack and then headed back to Mpayathutlwa. 

Lion spoor found, but not the lions

Time spent at the waterhole didn’t bring too much but we did have a nice sighting of a Lanner Falcon that came to drink. Back to camp under a pretty cloudy sky and we got some fuel into the car and clearing our gas lamp. The night before the light had attracted every moth for miles and there had been a ton of them sacrificed filling up the lamp. 

Our lamp full of insects

With camp chores done, we chilled out overlooking the pan and having our lunch of pasta salad. The weather decided on what our plans should be for the afternoon. The storms clouds were gathering again and when it started to rain, we decided to get things under cover and start our game drive early, expecting to be hit by another massive storm. 

Brown hyena racing on the pan

But the storm never materialized and we headed around the pan with a bit of light drizzle at least keeping things cool. The highlight of the drive was coming across a Scrub hare, a rabbit we see relatively often at dusk when it’s too hard to shoot as it’s hopping away. This one was very obliging and allowed us some nice shots of him. 

Doing some camp chores

Otherwise the afternoon was largely quiet. We spent most of it at the waterhole watching the Kori bustards and other birds come to drink. Checking for tracks near our campsite proved fruitless so after a drive of nothing much we got into camp just as it was dusk. 

Scrub hare

The heavy cloud cover didn’t allow for any sort of sunset and we figured we would be in for some rain during the night which meant getting things done as quickly as possible although we had to stop and check out a cute little springhare that was foraging around the edge of our campsite. These purely nocturnal little creatures are not often seen up close so it was a nice little surprise. 

Rain on the horizon

The rain came down just as we had put our meat on the braai so we made for the car and hoped the fire wouldn’t go out otherwise we’d be going vegetarian for the evening. Luckily the rain eased and we were able to enjoy our dinner under the cloudy sky before getting most of the stuff into the car and heading to bed, hopeful that the rain would stay away for the rest of the night.

Kori bustard having a drink