7 June

Once again we were packed and ready to leave by 07h30. We had planned to drive to Houmoed, turn around and then backtrack to Kielie Krankie. Yet again the Kgalagadi was alive with animals. We also saw a tawny eagle and many crimson breasted shrikes. The first hour and half passed without much excitement and I was beginning to think that a coffee stop would be order. We went around a bend and we saw two cars parked in the road. I thought to myself…this is it….this is my lion sighting. Well no lions but something equally as exciting. I gave SO my camera because the sighting was on his side and I grabbed my video camera. Unfortunately we only got the tail end of this sighting and they soon disappeared over the dunes.

http://video.tinypic.com/player.php?v=6gt90fc

We thought we would continue to Munro and have coffee but not ten minutes down the road a car flagged us down and as we pulled up alongside them my eye picked up the reason for them stopping us. There on the dune in front of us lay 2 beautiful black maned lions! Eventually we had found them. I did not care that they were far away and on SO’s side of the car…it was a lion sighting. That was all that mattered.





We decided to have coffee there and keep our eye on them in case they should decide to move. Needless to say they were all partied out from the night before. The only movement from them was the laying down of their heads as they made them themselves comfortable…. After finishing our coffee we moved on to Munro……..there were hordes and hordes of sandgrouse at the waterhole. We then had a brief sighting of meerkats but they were not interested in posing for us. We sat a while at Houmoed where I photographed this heron

and then turned around and set off for Kielie Krankie .

Soon after I spotted a giant eagle owl…..

this was turning into a really exciting drive. Not long after that we had the most amazing sighting of cape cobra. It was lying in the road but then it moved off. I fully expected it to disappear down a hole which it duly did. But then we saw it come out of another hole and so it continued in and out of burrows, obviously hunting but not finding anything. We were able to watch it for a while. I think it was positively the longest cobra I had ever seen.

http://video.tinypic.com/player.php?v=4tq8di9

We then came across the lions again .They were still fast asleep on the dunes and were totally unaware of all the cars parked beneath them. We found the cheetahs again( I presume it was the same 2). They were also asleep on the dunes.

They were actually quite a bit closer to the lions than previously. I thought they would have long since disappeared. We eventually arrived at Kielie Krankie at about 12h30. As you can imagine we were on a high…we had seen lions, cheetah, meerkats, cobra and an owl all in one morning. It does not get much better than that!!!!