full of pride

backblip

Our last morning game drive at Kwando Lagoon proved to be the best when we caught up and spent some time with the Holy Pride, some 18 lions strong. This time the young male was with them. The cubs were all in a playful mood. The pride moved on from where we found them and we followed them to a stand off with a herd of wildebeest. The wildebeest have poor eyesight and kept advancing to the pride until they focused enough to confirm it was lions then bolted in the opposite direction. The pride weren’t interested and made their way to the shade of a few trees. Whereby the cubs had fun climbing a tree but one of the small ones got stuck up there and didn’t seem to know how to get down. One of his elder siblings kept going up and visibly reassured him and descended backwards as if to say follow me. That didn’t work so back up and this time turned around and showed the little one how to crawl down face first. That worked and it was wonderfully funny to watch.

We moved on at lunch time to our next camp at Kwara concession, a huge game rich area. We had met an English couple who had become friends and our travelling partners in the safari truck and as luck would have it they were also moving on to the same place and shared the small plane to Kwara. We were straight out on an afternoon drive in the new camp and it gave us sightings of many elephant, nesting white backed vultures and wattled crane (extras). Wattled cranes are rare, listed as globally vulnerable on the red list with numbers still decreasing. There are thought to be just 6000 mature individuals left.

The night drive spotted an african wildcat, ancestors of the domestic cat, with stripy tail and legs. On arrival back in the camp we were escorted to the communal area rather than our room due to elephants in camp. After about 20 minutes they moved on a little and we had free passage again.