Thursday 9th January 2014

Trails started in earnest with two walks in high humidity and thirty degrees in the shade, apparently for Makuleke this isn’t hot. Still its left me totally shattered with barley enough energy to write this. Rather than the distance walked my tiredness definitely down to dehydration, my biggest learning of the day is, drink more.

Walking here is stunning, it’s the last frontier, totally unspoilt with no remnants of cattle farming. The highlights of the walk included getting very close to kudu, one of which seemed happy by our approach to about 15 metres unlike the others who had already bolted. Coming across old settlement sites in this wilderness was both interesting and humbling, signs showing the breadth of occupation included Stone Age scrapers, pottery and even a butter knife.

Whilst we didn’t see any dangerous game we did follow the fresh tracks of two lions for about thirty mins and we also came across the even fresher tracks of a leopard, this may have been what was causing the impala to alarm call just before. As we made our way back to camp we found the tracks of a male leopard, I’ve set my camera trap outside my tent in hope.

Once Bruce knew that Cliff and I were keen on fitness he put us through our paces? The exercises looked simple, easy almost and we only had to do three sets, by the end we had only been working for a total of 7 1/2 minutes. I thought I was going to be ill during and after. I’m not sure what he’s got planned for us tomorrow, I shudder to think.

My mind was quickly taken off the fitness session when I got back to the tent and found a rock monitor digging for food. I spent the next twenty minutes watching and taking photos of it.