Saturday 19th July 2014

After a week of not many elephants they appear to be coming back now. We had a moonlit view of one feeding on the Croton outside our tent at two this morning. Despite being early it was worth getting up to watch especially as my days of watching elephants from my bedroom are numbered, my departure date looming.

Our birding took us up to Reed Buck Vlei today. Whilst we got out of the vehicle and skirted around the edge of the water it wasn’t walking as I’ve come to know and love. I want to be out there walking – tracking elephants and lion, making approached on buffalo and having the luck of bumping a leopard. Above all, now that I have my “Lead”, I want to be doing all of the above with guests. I’m going to have to make a plan to get out for a few sneaky walks in between activities. I do want to improve my birding but I just don’t think I’ve got what it takes, namely the patience.

On the drive there we came across Steve’s car from Wilderness. He’s been sabotaging our vehicles in one way or the other recently so we found where he’d hidden his own keys and moved the Land Cruiser 100 metres down the road behind the bush. We were happy with this until we found out that he’d actually planned to walk back to camp and somebody else was picking up his vehicle.

Running these last couple of days has been tough, the good living of late is certainly catching up. I’m also totally shattered, not used to the late nights. I’ve actually be snoozing during the afternoon which is normally unheard of for me.

We walked the north west this afternoon across the flood plain. Alan didn’t take much convincing to follow up on some ele tracks. But seen as it was a birding course he did so to see what birds they would flush for us.