“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.” – Edmund burke

My cycle started off with a big bang and a lot of excitement with changes happening in the African bush.

On my first drive back we found tracks for a pride of lions, ‘Zulu’ (my tracker) and I thought that the tracks looked like they had been left by at least 7 individuals. It started off slow as they were walking on the road for the first 30 minutes, then they started moving through big areas of bush, after about one and a half hours of tracking on foot and on the Safari vehicle we managed to find them sleeping just in the tree line of an open area. At first we could not tell which pride it was as there were 4 sub-adult males and 4 females and for the first time we had the pride called the Sparta Pride deep into our area. Probably feeling a lot of pressure from new males pushing in from the north and for the sake of the sub-adult males they ran South.

We also had some sightings of the 3 females from the Southern Pride with their 4 cubs, the females had been struggling to hunt and feed the cubs and they were in desperate need of a meal. About a week later, on my way to the airstrip I found them in the road with all 4 cubs looking worse than before, they moved off into the bush looking back at me as if they knew that was the last time...... Days later we found out that three of the cubs had unfortunately starved to death and only one lone survivor was left.

When we eventually got a chance to see them again you could see the commitment in the cubs eyes as he was pushing way beyond his body strength. I hope that when I return in the bush that they will have had plenty of meals.

However it is that only the toughest that will survive.

Three weeks into my cycle I was fortunate enough to have spent a lot of time with Nottins and her cub. There was a stage where I was extremely worried about them as Nottins could not provide a good meal for the cub and she was catching tortoises just to keep her going but then one day the call came through on the radio that they have found Nottins and her cub with a fresh baby kudu kill. With all the excitement we rushed over and when we got there we were fortunate to see her hoisting the kill up a Marula tree next to us, to keep it safe from predators and allowing the two off them to feed in comfort, not looking over their shoulders the whole time. The next day we found Nottins leaving the cub at the kill and moving in a South Easterly direction for quite a distance, at least 2 kilometres away she then disappeared into the bush and we let her be. The next morning we went to where the cub was left on the kudu kill and there was nothing to be found but tracked of Nottins and her cub going the exact same way as she went the previous day. We followed and surprisingly found them on another kill, just shows that predators are opportunistic hunters. Nottins is certainly making sure her cub will not go hungry soon.

I also got spoiled with some great sightings of cheetahs and wild dogs, they are 2 of my favourite animals in the bush. With them being endangered and sightings of them are very seldom I try and spend as much time as possible with them, allowing me to see them hunt and do their everyday activities.

And to close it all off the one day we saw a lot of vultures circling high in the sky and every now and then a few drop down to land, we went out that afternoon following the vultures hoping to find something on a kill, but as we went into the bush we found something amazing. It was a herd of elephants all surrounding something very special, a new born baby elephant. The baby was not strong enough to start walking after a few minutes so the herd found a great spot in the shade in a sandy area where they all stayed for 2 days giving the baby a chance to get stronger and follow the herd. Really amazing to see the herd staying behind with the cow and her calf.

Now I really can’t wait to see what my next six weeks has in store for me!