I was on a big-time lion hunt tonight! The lions had kept me awake for much of last night with their roaring. It was like a thunderstorm. A lion storm. I like it. Anyway, I felt they owed us a really good sighting tonight. I managed to pick up a big male’s tracks near camp and followed for several kilometers, but no lion at the end of it. The hunt was good fun though.

Later we stopped because we heard something before we saw it. We could hear an animal crashing around in the dry grass in the riverbed. I told my guests that we definitely wanted to hang around and see what this was. “I don’t know what’s going to come out, but I can say it probably won’t be a wild cat”, I told them. “They move ever so quietly”. I was expecting a porcupine or perhaps a honey badger (because honey badgers don’t care about making noise). Of course, after a few excited moments, a wildcat emerges from the grass. Guide Fail.  But it did make for a memorable wild cat sighting. It approached the car so purposefully and eagerly that for a moment I almost thought it could be the camp’s friendly wildcat, perhaps hoping for a lift home. It wasn’t.

And we saw porcupines! Again, they were very very big ones. Cape porcupines are the second largest rodent on the planet and it shows.

Sightings:

African Wild Cat
Gemsbok
Wildebeest
Gennet
Porcupine
Springhare
Spotted Eagle Owl
Ostrich