First blood

All the morning sick in bed.
Lorenzo, the nephew of the owner, which is also working for the company, was coming so I went out of bed, had a shower and drove down. actually Rashidi was driving. We met Lorenzo and drove towards north bank of breakfast point were a lions killed a giraffe in the night, the claw marks still very visible.
We arrived there and we saw the dead giraffe and 2 lioness sleeping in the bush, we parked the car and waited. Kim and Riaan arrived and then also Owen.
We waited there and slowly one lioness came to fedd and soon three small cubs followed, the same guys we followed some days ago.
They are one month old and they are very thin, the mother does not have milk, she probably does not it since some days, after eating the giraffe she gonna have the milk back soon, but meanwhile.... the cubs solved the problem their own way, they started feeding on the giraffe, it was quite a show, they were tasting their first blood, licking, biting and trying with little success to cut a slice of meat, climbing the giraffe up and down and fighting amongst themselves.
You could see all they were thinking was how to get a bite of giraffe, so small so single minded.
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Coartem 17/07/10

I found a flap necked chameleon in my basin this morning, I took it out and showed to guests, such a special animal.
Got very very sick in the evening, malaria or not malaria, who knows? I swallowed coartem and cut the doubts short.

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Thirteen hours

Today we are "hunting" sable, there is only one place were we have a decent chance to spot them, it is called makinde springs and it is very far.
We start early and we drive through mbagi and mwayembe, then mdonya forest and over....
In mwayembe springs we had the pleasure to see kaka and pua the two male lions that dominate the mdonya pride, the early morning light was palying wonderfully with their eyes and their biiiiiiig manes.
We drove off, watched buffaloes drinking in the river and crossed it and ventured in a road seldom used by anybody.
We soon realised that nobody yet drove the road this year and we also understood why, blackcotton soil, has hard as a rock and dotted with big dry elephant foot prints, paved long patches of the track, branches were hanging everywhere over the road and we often had to dive in order to avoid them, leave alone all the dead trees fallen acoss that we had to avoid with big loops offroad. Worst hing was that there wwa so many sickle bush in the road that it was a miracle we did not have a single puncture Man, it was a fight more then a drive, eventually we got to the spring, lot of water yet but not even the shadow of a sable, we went back and forth, we waited, we went farther on but nothing. We even checked Mkwawa springs with the same result..... Just giraffes and little more... It was already lnch time so we ate few sandwiches that were meant for a sort of brunch and my guests decided to stay out all day. We got the same male lions in the same spot and drove up the escarpment enjoying the wonderful view.
We went down to mbagi and to my great surprise we got again the honeybadger in the same pool, definitely trying to snatch a catfish for dinner. Sweet...
Eventually we also found two lionesses out of the sokwe forest, they tried to hunt impalas with the usual failure..... Was a long day I drove for 13 hours but in the end was good fun.
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