We had another early start and already when we picked up the lions at dawn they were in the process of passing out for the day.
Well that was until the black rhino bull entered the scene. We saw him moving around in the bush in the background and the young male lion went to investigate. The rhino, with its bad eyesight would only have seen movement, which was enough to make it charge. But this was really of no consequence to the lion as it bolted out the way.
Then the rhino suddenly found itself confronted by our vehicle. A stationary monster. Not sure what to do and trying to keep face he charged, stopped, charged again, stopped, charged and ran off.
We were lucky to have called his bluff, and it was incredible to see the speed that such a huge beast can attain.
Once he had moved off in his cloud of dust the lions did pass out for the rest of the day.
Mandlovu and her herd had split off from the main herd and were right up in the very northeast corner of the reserve. Trailing them was a young bull.
The country they were in was horribly thick and had me cursing as they kept moving deeper and deeper into the thickets. At least the thick bush did provide lots of shade from the scorching sun. Temperatures just didn’t let up again today.
The rest of the breeding herd had moved south into more respectable country and ended up swimming in Nduna dam. Now that’s what elephants should be doing.
The mopanie bush did though provide us with another find, mopanie worms. These colourful worms can at times be found in their thousands crawling over and denuding all mopanie trees of their leaves. But I think the ones we found were an early batch and out in small numbers. I climbed to the top of a tree to get a worm to show the girls. They couldn’t believe that people eat them as a delicacy either fresh, dried or fried and now sometimes tinned. I didn’t venture that far as to show them how yummy they really are.
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