Chobe National Park - Day 7

Finding this guy around twin hills was pure magic!

We had a long drive ahead of us, out the Ghoha gate and re-enter the park through Ngoma gate but the priority was a morning game drive before leaving Savuti. So we headed straight to the elephant carcass in the hopes that the lions were feeding.But there wasn't a cat to be seen to match the lion calls overnight. Almost unbelievable an elephant carcass in the heart of Savuti would be untouched in prime predator country.

After checking out the immediate vicinity we decided to head to the savuti channel and check that area for cats as it had seemed an area predators would be hanging out. There were no tracks to say that however and after taking a few sandy roads we decided to carry on a but further and check out the hills in the area. Savute is dotted with these small hills with driving circuits around them, always a prime spot for leopards. 

But once again we couldn't find any spotted cats from Kudu Hill or Bushmans Hill so we crossed the main road and headed to Sable Hill. That seemed even less likely and the sand was very soft as well. At once stage we lost Sudesh who was driving behind us and suspected the soft sand up the hill was chasing some issues. Sable hill is best avoided, the sand is awfully tick and deep. 

We were just reversing back when we saw him come hammering over the hill on a side track - almost like a mad max character! Sable hill done without any sightings we were just leaving it to cross back to the main road when Dru spotted a fresh male lion track. 

We could see he'd crossed over the main road and then onto the other side and into the hills there. We followed his tracks, every now and then losing them as he walked off the road, and then picking them up again. In some places we had to make an educated guess about which intersection turn he took but we kept tracking him until we got to an area of hard ground and lost the track.

  

Finding this guy will remain a magical moment of tracking lions. 

Still, we knew the direction he was going and kept at it, picking up some lioness tracks a little while later so we knew we were on the right track. It's always awesome when tracking pays off and Dru got to exclaim "Lion!Lion!Lion!"

...and he walked straight towards us.

There was a magnificent male lion on a side road walking towards us. We were not sure if it was one of the northern pride males or a different one but he was a really regal male in his prime and totally unaffected by us.

By the sniffing in the air he was doing, it looked like he was looking for the lioness whose tracks we'd seen. He calmly walked straight towards us and then stopped at a bush to scent mark, before walking within touching distance straight past the car and onto the road ahead of us.

After urging Sudesh to go ahead we followed him for a while but unfortunately he moved off the road about 100 meters down and went to sit in the veld. We assumed that he was going to stay there for a while and then start to follow the female again and there were no roads in that area, so we left him stoked with our encounter and continued to check out the hills while meandering back to the campsite area.

Walked past us to scent mark the bush between the two cars!

We made a beeline for the elephant carcass and found the a couple of the lions had finally found it. Maybe it was the jackals we'd spotted earlier at the carcass that had led the lions there. It was presumably the same male and female that we'd seen previously at the waterhole nearby that we suspected were mating.

After marking his bush, he was back on the road leading us!

But now the lioness was preoccupied with eating while the male lay nearby in the shade of a bush. We were almost sorry that we were leaving Savute today and this would no doubt be a hot bed of activity over the next few days, especially since it was close enough to the road and enough space for everyone to view, but not close enough to disturb the animals.

She is on a strict Elephant diet just as the first carcass finished, this appeared. 

We watched them for a while as the female fed from the carcass and then suddenly she spotted a jackal slowly slink up to the dead elephant with the hopes of grabbing a piece. Despite it being way too much for her to eat alone, there was no way she was letting a jackal get any of it and within a second she was off like a shot chasing the jackal who was running for his life! As usual the jackal got away when she gave up the chase and slowly moved back to the carcass before sitting in the shade of another bush out of sight.

The whole Elephant just for this couple. 

The King is sorted, Elephant carcass and a pride female for company. 

Yep, time to chill and relax and take it easy!

We had a few things to do before we left so Dru and I left to head back to the campsite while Sudesh stayed in his car watching the lions. After a quick toilet break we went to find the revenue officer to see if we could pay for the park fees as we'd been in the park for 3 days now without paying. Luckily he was there and knew that we hadn't paid yet.

So after the admin and payment we found out from him about the condition of the road through to Ihaha and then headed back to the carcass and the lions. There wasn't much to see except for the lioness back on elephant feeding, but Sudesh confirmed that they were a mating couple so we had been right about that.

The male had also come to feed and while they were eating the stomach had burst and the stomach contents had flown out giving both the lions and those watching quite a fright. The lions had frantically tried to cover the smell of the stomach, but there was little chance other scavengers would pick up the scent, and judging by the flies it was going to be sooner rather than later.

..and this is giving a Yellow Billed kite the evil eye. 

With both lions now in the shade and nothing happening, we decided to head out as we had quite a long drive ahead of us, so we left the lions with the massive meal and headed north towards Ghoha Hills gate. The road wasn't too bad despite us anticipating that the sandiest patches would be to the Ghoha gate and we got there about 3 hours after we set off. 

Amusingly, the park ranger recognized Dru from his days of going to Khutse GR 15 years back. Just shows how few people used to go to Khutse back then. From there we left the Chobe NP and into the forest reserve before getting back into the national park after passing the villages. The road actually got a bit rougher in terms of sand and it was pretty slow going. 

We almost missed a turn off as we hadn't been following the map closely enough. We only picked it up because a game drive vehicle had suddenly taken the turn and it made us check Tracks4Africa as it was an obscure road compared to the wide one we were on. We stopped and it happened to be in a very soft patch of sand, so we almost got stuck but luckily Dru made it out in time onto firmer ground. Sudesh wasn't that lucky as he had to stop suddenly and now the tyres were sunk into the sand. 

Luckily the recovery gear was on hand and he was soon out the sand and we were able to continue one what Tracks4Africa said was the better option as well as the main road. It was sandy however, so we can only wonder how sandy the other road was. It was around lunch time when we finally got to the first village of Kachikau. 

We'd be on tar for the next 40km so we found a tree just outside the village to have lunch amongst a flock of goats and pump the tyres back up. You must carry a decent pump to enable airing up your tyres to ensure you don't expose the side wall of the tyre to the hot tarmac. 

From there we could see the Chobe river and the floodplain, the change in scenery and the animals. Now zebras were visible and we could hear the call of the fish eagle. It was time to head back into Chobe National Park.

To be continued...

Where am I?

The Ngoma gate which sits right next to Namibia let us back into Chobe NP and from there it was more sand driving before we got to the riverfront and after another hour or so we made it to Ihaha, the public campsite and our home for the next 2 nights.

The massive Chobe flood plains with one of its iconic Buffalo herds on it. 
We have crossed over to the Chobe River side of this awesome park. 

We checked in with the wildlife guy and with the guy that runs the campsite. We hadn't added Sudesh to the original booking and now needed to sort that out and pay for the stay. At first the card machine wasn't working but it soon transpired that he hadn't switched the modem on for internet connection so after a bit of delay we'd paid, got some intel on the animals in the area and went to set up our camp before the afternoon game drive.

Baboons occupying a Ihaha campsite, not all of them have shade so check before booking. 

Ihaha is a pretty special campsite, with individual stands along the river. A couple don't have shade which would be unpleasant during the day, but otherwise they're neatly set up and ours had a view of the river. It's a peaceful place with impala, zebra and buffalo grazing along the river and the kingfishers flying along the water. 

The river is also the international boundary with Namibia and on the other side of the water is farmland so as usual we could see cows on the opposite bank with fisherman in the water, ignoring the crocodiles and hippos in the hopes of getting a good catch.

Sunsets from the Ihaha campsite are pure magic. 

Both lions and leopard had been nearby the campsite and the leopard was of special interest to us because she was resident and had 2 sub-adult cubs with her. So we set out on our evening game drive to check the area and hopefully catch some lions before heading back to the campsite at sunset to try and catch a leopard roaming around.

Out around 3.30pm even though it was hot, we meandered along the riverside drive, hoping to catch the elephants coming to drink. They were surprisingly lacking which puzzled us, as we thought at this time of year they'd be heading to the river to drink. 

A couple had told us a couple of days previously that they'd been in a massive thunderstorm in Ihaha, so maybe the elephants didn't need to come down to drink at the moment, but it was still strange to see so few elephants.

Surprised to see this huge gathering of Pelicans on the Chobe River. 

We eventually got to Serondela, the picnic site about halfway between Ihaha and the Sedudu gate, which is near to Kasane town. We stopped to get a few beers for the evening and then went to explore the waterfront around Serondela. 

It didn't take us long to find the clump of cars - an indication of a good sighting and we were not disappointed. The Serondela pride was out on the sandy bank surrounded by game drive vehicles.

The Serondela pride, keeping an eye on the floor plain. 

They seemed to be watching the game on the floodplain and so we moved out of the way so that they had sight of the game, with Sudesh doing well to get himself out the soft sand - getting out to push was not an option! 

The lions were too lazy and the game was too sharp and they all fled long before the lions were even thinking about getting up. It was a crowded sighting but we had the patience to wait until some of the cars moved off. Actually, they were suddenly all moving off at once so we suspected something else going on elsewhere. Still we had the lions to ourselves for a while giving us an opportunity for some shots.

Lazy lions just waking up for the evening. 

The light was starting to fade by now and it was time for us to head back to camp on the main road with enough of a buffer in case we caught something. It was also the 1st October were the park times changed allowing an extra half an hour on either side to be in the park. 

And we needed it. 

Dru had been keep an eye on the game drive vehicle tracks as we were heading back and when they veered off into a side road and back onto the water's edge, we followed. And were soon rewarded - there in the open on the floodplain were a pair of mating lions.

Room with a view of the Chobe flood plain. 

And we arrived just in time. Just after we got there the lions started mating. We've seen mating lions before but it's not often there isn't a tree or grass or another car in the way. This had just the open plain in the background, it was just a pity the light was a bit dark but we hoped that the photos did it justice.

 

While watching that we noticed that there were a few cars about 100m down away from the lions. To not be watching lions could only mean one thing - leopard. And sure enough, someone had seen a leopard in the bushes. It was getting dark and the leopard was being elusive so we joined the search.

But despite the eyes on the bush, we couldn't find him so we decided that it was probably time to go. But just as we were driving out Cheryl spotted him walking between 2 bushes and we were back on the search. He seemed to be heading away from the river so we went up the side road in the hopes that we would come our way. 

A few other cars had the same idea, but he didn't materialise. So it was back down to the river, and again we caught a glimpse of him. We also found a scrub hare just sitting in front of the bush and it seemed that the leopard may actually be stalking the hare. We all stopped and waited, all eyes trained on the bunny, but there was no movement from the leopard and unfortunately we couldn't see him because he was obscured by bush. 

Turns out he was sitting right behind the hare, who had no idea he was there, but must have thought it strange that all these cars were gathered around him ;) Eventually the time caught up with us and we only had about 10 minutes to get back to camp. It would be a rush and we wouldn't be able to stop for anything. 

Which was a pity, because less than a kilometer from camp in the dark, Cheryl spotted a sub-adult lion sitting on the side of the road. We slowed down when we saw another youngster ahead that seemed to want to cross the road and didn't want us or the cars behind us to knock into him. We put the flashlight on the veld and about 9 pairs of eyes looked back at us - a whole pride was just sitting in the open next to the main road. 

Night fall at Ihaha, fire is up, sun setting, perfect. 

If we'd been back earlier like planned we would have caught them, but then of course we wouldn't have seen the mating lions and the leopard - the choices we make in the bush! Back at camp knowing there were the dangerous dagga boys around that had been grazing on the riverfront, and that there was a pride of lions not far away, we made sure we were quickly sorted out with our fire, tents and showers. 

After the excitement of the day, it was a peaceful and pleasant evening and we went to bed hoping that tomorrow would be another cat day.