Day One - Part 2

 Sunday 12 February — Part 2

Headed out at 4:30 after a bit of tea and chocolate cake.  If only every day had a pause for tea and cake…

Now that it’s over I’ll fully admit that I was hoping beyond all hope to see this melanistic leopard.  I’m not going to deny it.  I also knew though that I only had 3 full game drives to do it.  The odds, as they say, were not necessarily in my favor.  Add to it the uncertainty of Mother Nature and well, I should really know better.

So off we went. We did a lap around the dam, hoping to maybe see the lions who belonged to the paw prints we saw near there earlier today.  But Simon says that there are more leopards here than lions, so it was maybe not likely we’d see them.  We did see a hippo momentarily, before he submerged in the dam and only graced us with a couple of nostril views after that.

We spent some time with an older (approx 50 year old) matriarch elephant, and likely her two daughters and possibly two grandchildren.  It was a nice sighting, watching them eat acacia peacefully on their own.

But it wasn’t leopard.

As the sun started to go down, I lost serious hope, figuring we’d just try again tomorrow.   We climbed up to an overlook high above the river and watched the sun go down.  I had my classic G&T sundowner and enjoyed the moment.  I shared my vehicle with two young girls from Germany who were also keen (but maybe not AS keen as I was) to see the leopard.

We sat quietly contemplating the rapidly falling darkness and suddenly we heard a “woof-woof” guttural bark from far below us, off to the right.  “LEOPARD,” said Simon.  And never did you see a bunch of safarigoers pack up the sundowners and descend the overlook.  Off we went in the direction of the woof.

Now color me crazy, but it does seem odd that we’re looking for a black leopard in total darkness, doesn’t it?  Right.  After about 20 minutes, Simon asked me to swap seats (I’d been in the front next to him) with the spotter, who was in the back row of seats.  The spotter was now going to use a spotlight to catch the eyes of whatever is out there.  And it worked.

Not even 10 minutes later we spotted a leopard, a big burly male of the “normal” type, meaning not black.  He stood frozen in the light and then crouched down.  Clearly not typical leopard behavior.  At that point I had that “we should not be doing this” feeling.  We shouldn’t.  So we moved on.  On any other safari, seeing a massive male like that would be icing on the cake.  But not this safari.  No way.

Not much longer after that, the spotter saw her, the beautiful young melanistic female, Giza.  They don’t name any other cats here, just her.  Search for her on social media and you’ll see that she’s lit up the airwaves lately.  I’ve seen it, and now I wanted to see her.  And there she was.

She is petite, and lithe, and the spotlight catches the subtle shift in shades of black as her spots and what should be golden yellow merge.  She is, in a word, ethereal. 

She is also very difficult to shoot in this light for a photographer like me with rusty skills. But I tried, and so far I think I might have a couple of keepers.  But we followed her for maybe 15 minutes as she tried to hunt.  And a couple times I said aloud “I feel really bad about this”, “this” being tracking her with a spotlight.  And then I realized she was using it to help her hunt.  Positioning herself between us and a dik-dik so that her prey was blinded by our light, yet she could see everything clearly.   I watched her slink along on her belly and she came oh so close until another dik-dik sounded the alarm.  At least we didn’t blow it for her.

We tracked her through some of the scrub bush around here and at one point she flopped and rolled and showed us her belly (as a cat owner, I saw that as a sign that she’s comfortable anyway?). And then she walked right towards us and I fired off a few shots.  I pray that they look as good at home as they do on my tiny camera screen.  Fingers crossed.  I flopped back in my seat in the vehicle and a tear came to my eye.  It actually happened.  I saw her.  What a relief.

We headed back to camp, which I expected to be a 15-20 minute drive and instead it was maybe 2 minutes.  She is literally on our doorstep.  And as I sit here now typing this before bed, I hear a “woof-woof” quite nearby.  And the camp managers’ 4 dogs are barking, which they do only when they hear her or the male nearby.  So she is likely quite close by.

Like any addiction, you get a hit and you only want more.  And I do.  We made plans to be up at 5:30 and out at 6:00 tomorrow, heading back to where we left her.  Now I want, no, need, to see her again.  #addicted

Dinner tonight was quite good.  A yummy spinach souffle, stir fried vegetables, rice noodles and sticky toffee pudding.  Our pre-dinner drinks had yummy zucchini fritters.

It’s 9:30 pm now and I haven’t gotten more than 5 hours of sleep since Friday morning.  I’m wired for sound and just want to get back out there.  It didn’t take me long to remember why I wanted to come back so badly.