10th March - Day 10 of the trip, day 6 at the reserve

Our group starts off with a game drive. I start the off insanely itchy from mozzie bites! ARH!!!! Darn things!

Just beautiful to do a drive in the morning when the world is waking up. We track rhino but don't see them :( We seem then to drive for ages before seeing anything at all but then stumble across Chiedza (the female lion of the completely wild pride - her name means 'Light') and her two cubs. They were about 100 meters away and hidden behind a load of bushes so not great for pics but do have one with a cute little cub face poking through the trees. On the way back to base we saw some of the giraffe. I'm always in awe of those magnificent animals. There's a wee baby - under a year old - who loves hanging out with the Water Buck. Khumbulani calls her 'Lion food' on account of her vulnerability to predators away from the other giraffes. She is so gorgeous though - would be such a shame if nature had her tagged for anything other than a beautiful long life. Some of the other volunteers think I'm a bit soft!
After breakfast we had some more time with William and those in the predator camps. The lions were very sleepy so not being very interactive but William happy to share his considerable knowledge of them with us so we learnt loads.

The tigers we much more playful. Ben was splashing about in the pond whilst Tikka + Masala were happy to roll about with us. I was playing with Tikka when Masala jumped on my back so had claws in both ends of me at one point. William had to prize her off me! Said it was the curse of being small - makes an easier target to jump on.

Some beautiful pics of them all! Very grateful to have my massive 70-300mm lens for some gorgeous close ups.

After lunch it was more bush survival skills in the Wilderness. Bberry signal kicked in when I was there and got confirmation of arrangements for my weekend trip back to the Lion Park outside Jo'burg. Am so excited to go back there and catch up with everyone and see Purdy, Gambit, Tigger + co!! It was lovely to hear from Alison that the staff were really excited about my visit too - we all had such a good time in the two and a half weeks I was there in Dec 08. Can't wait!!!!

We had persuaded Khumublani to take us on a dusk drive after dinner. The sky was heavy with cloud so not the picturesque sight that we had the night the truck had broken down and difficult to take pictures. But we did nevertheless see a spotted dikkop, some spring hare, a yellow mongoose, some bleesbok, giraffe, lots of zebra and an aardwolf. We ran in to an amazing electric storm which was quite dramatic. Seemed to send everyone indoors though as there were no lions, elephant or rhino around at all. By the time we got back to base the heavens had opened and we had some much needed rain. Hopefully that means the water table will be oin a better state now because the animals were really down to the last dregs of all the watering holes.

Anyway a shorter post than normal because my hands are still aching from chopping down all those trees. Hope all's well back there.

Love to all.

Jox