Love what you do and do what you love. Passion is the key that opens the door to joy and abundance. – David Cuschieri

This could be rated as one of my best cycles so far. Every sighting I had, there was something interesting happening, it is difficult to know where to start.

The mornings were still nice and crisp, with a cool breeze moving through the bush. We had some really nice sightings of Maxabeni male leopard and Warthog Wallow mating for a few days .

Maxabeni was slowly but surely getting irritated by the female as they have been spending more than 5 days together. He was growling more intensely after every copulation which made for a great sighting for us. Eventually Warthog Wallow decided that that’s enough and moved away from him. A few days later we found Maxabeni just before dark moving slowly as he had a bit of a limp in his right back leg. I told my guests that we were going to follow him for a while, driving along behind him he stopped and stared intensively... We had a look and saw a big herd of impala up ahead. The hunt was on - with our lights off we just sat waiting for about 15 minutes when all of a sudden the impalas started alarm calling and running! Our lights went on and we drove straight towards where the impala were calling but couldn’t find anything. We made a bigger loop and there he was running towards a big Marula tree in the distance with his well-deserved prize – a fully grown impala in his mouth. He took her up the tree before the hyenas could get to him.

A massive struggle went on up the tree as the impala was still alive. He suffocated her and got her hooked around a branch. He took 2 or 3 bites before moving to the next branch for a rest as that took a lot of energy! At the time we had been there for an hour and he was now sleeping so we decided that we were going to make our way back to Bush Lodge after an amazing sighting... But our luck had run out as my vehicle had a flat battery and we were 30 minutes from the lodge!! On the upside, we were stuck at an incredible sighting. We sat next to the tree with our lights off waiting for backup when all of a sudden a massive thumping sound next to us. Lights went on very quickly and it was the impala that slipped out of the tree. Maxabeni came down just as quickly as the impala fell – he picked it up and ran towards the tree as a hyena was hot on his heels and got hold of the impala while Maxabeni was on his way up the tree... He lost it – the hyena stole his well-deserved kill! Him now sitting in the tree watching more hyenas coming in eating his food, he got impatient and went down trying to steal pieces of food back but got chased back up the tree a few times. Our rescue vehicle arrived and helped us start the vehicle and off we went.

It’s been a pleasure having the Fourways males around as they have provided us with some great sightings in the last few months. It’s also great to see the females slowly but surely getting more relaxed with them being the new males in the area.

The one afternoon our drive just started when someone called in over the radio saying they had just driven past two male lions stalking a big herd of buffalo. It was a really warm day so it just showed how opportunistic they really are. I rushed down towards the area and found the two males on a buffalo calf kill, with the big herd of buffalo were already busy moving away.

They are a great team together and we are sure to see a lot more great sightings of these males and hopefully privileged enough to see them raising their own cubs with the Southern Pride females.

Every day has given me some great opportunities to take wonderful photos of nature and everything around it, even just stopping at a dam in the late afternoon you would definitely get some photos of something coming in for a drink.

So to end my cycle off I had guests that really wanted to see one of my favourite animals, the African wild dog, so on the last morning drive we decided to go out half an hour earlier to get to an area where we had tracks for the dogs over the last few days. On our way out we found tracks for the dogs with all the puppies - were we too late again we thought to ourselves, but then in the distance down the road we saw black little things running... We rushed there and yes it was them - 7 adults and 13 puppies all running down the road! We were over excited and were the only ones there so we stopped next to the road and the pups came running in playing next to us. The alpha pair then made their way closer and started regurgitating whole chunks of meat for them - it was so great to see that I only picked my camera up to take a couple of pictures and enjoy the rest of the sighting – this is what memories are made of!