South Africa: Finally - Leopard Tracks

Another over-cast and wet day at UmPhafa. This may have been the reason that it took us nearly two and a half hours to track down one of the female Rhino and her calf. It would appear that they don't like the rain or cold either. Sensible animals.

So we spent the morning tracking down the Rhino and then stopped off at the house for a bit of lunch and to warm up again before heading onto the other part of the reserve. This time we headed straight for the storm drain pipe running under the main road to Ladysmith. We know that the elusive Leopard uses this pipe to get from one side of the road to the other, taking it straight into UmPhafa. Liam wanted to set up a camera trap to see if we could get a picture of him. On our way to the drain pipe we spotted leopard tracks heading off into the reserve which we believe to be from yesterday. So he is somewhere on UmPhafa, he could be anywhere, he could even have seen us walking about yesterday. What a thought! Obviously I'm a tad excited!

We set the camera trap up so that we could see him going back under the road, however, in doing so we came across a Warthog head. The pig had been skinned by poachers and the head chopped off. It wasn't a nice sight! One of the eyes was still intact. I couldn't bring myself to take a picture.