2 hours after night watch & I was up again to go to Kruger park for the day.

We arrived at the phalbowra gate just after 6 & after grabbing a coffee we were on our way. Within minutes we had spotted some elephants in the bushes. We then saw various eagles (inc the Marshall eagle which is the biggest in SA & known to eat small children!), hawks, vultures, kites etc and various hoofed animals (bush buck, waterbuck, steenbok, impala etc) all before stopping for breakfast at letaba. The restaurant at letaba overlooks a river basin where we also spotted a crocodile & some baboons. It's a good spot for a great view. There is also an elephant museum which had several the story & tusks from several tusker elephants - a type of elephant with mahusive tusks!! All but one of them had lived til their natural old age which was nice, is sad that people would hunt them.

After breakfast we saw more grass, rocks, trees, impala etc until olifants bridge which provided another great view of the river & the hippos bathing in it. However by this point the sunshine had turned to wind - lots of wind & the temperature had dropped about 15oC! This part of SA is used to extreme changes of weather due to the heat rising and sucking in the cold air from the drakensburg mountains.

After the look out we drove a short way & were then flagged down as another car had spotted a leopard!! Yea!!
We got to watch it sit, walk round, sit again for several minutes - v exciting as leopards are v shy & will usually hide if they hear cars coming. Even our guide who has the job of identifying leopards from the camera traps has only ever seen them a handful of times so she was super excited too!

The leopard eventually wandered into the bush so we continued our journey spotting zebra, wilderbeast & ostriches until we reached the next set of cars - turned out someone had spotted a lion, and knowing how elusive they can also be we knew we would have to be patient if we wanted to see it. After 15 mins of looking through binoculars at the grass we finally spotted a lioness lounging around near some bushes. After another 15 mins or so we were rewarded with a visual on a second lioness and two cubs!! The cubs were super cute!!

We then drove on to satara for some lunch before continuing to look for rhinos - as at each rest area there are magnetic boards with maps where people mark animal sightings so we knew we were close. Unfortunately when we did see the rhino (2 white rhino) they were quite far from the road so hoping to see more when I do the rhino drive at selati later in the week

After more grass, tree & rock spotting we also saw a male and another female lion plus some baboons, giraffe & fighting waterbuck before we exited at orphens gate.

Sat night is party night at Leo Africa & we took a trip to a nearby restaurant called three bridges. I had pizza & shared a bottle of South African red - imported from Putney London!!!