Another 6am start today pays dividends straightaway at Kwandwe. Two male subadult lions, brothers, who are about 4 years old are nearby. When we find them, they are calmly lying in the grass, catching the early morning rays of the sun. I could sit a watch these two all day, but then Digby says very quietly – “I can see cheetahs”! Digby is on point, tracking the cheetahs, so off we go. He can see the three young cubs that were reported yesterday as having been separated from their mother and fourth sibling by the two troublemaking lions currently basking in the sun.
We find them relatively easily – they appear agitated, and are pacing and listening for their mother’s call.
We head off in the direction that the mother has been sighted in. We find her relaxed under a tree, with the fourth cub! Suddenly she sits up and issues a series of short bark-like calls – she has heard her errant cubs, and is calling them to join her. The female is wearing a tracking collar, which she has probably been wearing since she was a cub herself. The reserve uses these collars to locate the cheetahs when they go ‘off grid’ in some of the more remote, rarely visited areas of the reserve.
After a low-key reunion, the female leads her cubs across the road, carefully watching the vehicles, and away into the thickets, out of sight – and more importantly, the opposite direction from the young lions. She is a very successful mother – raising 4 cubs to 6 months of age is more than the average cheetah manages in a lifetime.
All this in the first hour! Encountering a troop of vervet monkeys seems something of an anti-climax, despite the dominant male establishing his credentials by displaying his bright blue testicles. Edited for content below…what a lovely face!
On the way back to the lodge, Jami suddenly stops the jeep, jumps out and jogs up the road. What did he see? This baby leopard tortoise! So close in colour to the dirt road, he is roadkill waiting to happen.
The baby tortoise is repatriated to a safer area away from the roads near the lodge, where he is less likely to be accidentally run over.
Rain threatens the afternoon game drive, but we want to locate a family of elephants that hasn’t been sighted for a while. They are discovered by another vehicle on the banks of the river, and we go for a closer look. It is raining in earnest by this time, and we can only get within 300m of the group. It is hard to tell whether they are trying to cross the river or simply teaching the young elephants how to do it, as they have three attempts at doing so. The smaller elephants end up completely submerged, and are rescued by the older elephants. The more confident elephants are splashing each other in the shallower water near the banks of the river. There are two tiny elephant calves with their mothers higher on the river bank – one ventures in with the rest of the herd, but is quickly out of it’s depth in the river, the water level of which is rising quickly.
