Category Archives: Travel Africa

Shingwedzi Camp KNP

We took the eastern vlei route northwards, from before Mopane camp – the road less travelled. Lemme check the map: It’s the Nshawu waterholes route and leads past the Grootvlei dam and Shibavantsengele viewpoint on the Mocambique border. I loved it. Some open plains and vleis for a change from dense Mopane trees and Mopane scrub. Many herds of zebra and wildebees, some waterbuck, a few impala, and a few huge ele bulls…

zebras on the grassy plains

Also Chestnut-backed Sparrow-lark on the gravel roads and flocks of Wattled Starling (some in full wattle).

chestnut-backed Sparrow-lark
zebra walks past a wattled starling

At Shingwedzi, a Hamerkop, a juvenile Little Sparrowhawk hunting, Green Woodhoopoe, Golden-tailed & Bearded Woodpecker, Red-billed & Yellow-billed Hornbill, Arrow-marked Babbler, and a noisy early morning Hooligan’s Robin (actually White-browed Robin-chat),

little sparrowhawk juvenile
green wood-hoopoe

A Rock Monitor Lizard came to visit Jess at the chalet. She told it to footsack in ruder language than that.

GIF of a monitor lizard near Jessie
yellow flower shingwedzi
blue flower shingwedzi

Rescued! After eight days of blissful peace I started worrying. I remembered the long spanner I need to free my spare wheel from under the bakkie is in the camper in Pretoria. A flat would leave me stranded. I approached a sensible fellow Ford Ranger driver who is headed out on a wilderness walk tomorrow and he rescued me in a jiffy. Now I have a dusty spare wheel inside the cab where I can get to it, the nuisance of its bulk almost guaranteeing I won’t have a flat.

Jessie followed the route of this weevil, calling me across to photograph it. She then bravely also took pics with my camera’s super-macro. In my pic you may notice the bugs eyes are wider cos there was a lot of wheezing in getting down on my knees.

A pair of Bennett’s Woodpeckers foraged right outside our chalet.

bennet's woodpeckers on the ground
Bennet's woodpeckers on the ground 2

That’s it. After ten lovely nights in Kruger we’re on our way home.

~~oo0oo~~

Olifants Camp KNP

We followed the right bank of the Letaba south-eastwards towards Olifants camp, driving with the flow then hit the left bank of the Olifants, flowing even browner and more strongly. Now we’re driving against the flow, the confluence of these great Lowveld rivers somewhere behind us.

Four ‘Thunderbirds’ crossed the road (Ground Hornbill), three of them flying up into trees; new antelope seen: Kudu and Nyala.

Twenty five eles came down to drink below me as I drank coffee at the Olifants camp restaurant while Jess had a nap in our chalet. Five wandered back into the bush while the big Ma led the others, including smallies, across the wide and swiftly flowing Olifants river. Lovely to watch the crossing. Every now and then a little one would disappear underwater and the rest would wait till they found their footing and emerged again, trunk held high.

Tracking & Signs of the Wild

Signs of carnage on our stoep! A kill? Looks like a big eagle caught an old grey and white goat and plucked out all it’s fur.

Oh, hang on, cancel that. I just remembered Jess gave me a haircut. She cuts the parts I can’t see. Back there. Behind me.

~~oo0oo~~

White-bellied Sunbird, Paradise Flycatcher, African Firefinch, Kurrichane Thrush, Bataleur, Marabou & Saddle-Billed Storks, Fish Eagle, Wahlbergs Eagle, Goliath Heron, House Sparrow, Brown-crowned Tchagra,

Yellow-bellied Sand Snake spotted by Jess in camp.

Letaba Camp KNP

We’re back in the Kruger Park as we wait for our camper to be de-rusted. Staying in chalets, to Jessie’s delight.

Late afternoon view across the Letaba from the restaurant stoep.

Restaurant Scops owlet – right above one of the outdoor tables.

Four kingfishers. Here’s the Woodland:

The Letaba eles and squirrels and monkeys were all well-behaved. The daughter not so much when I said Hey, Smile! in the elephant museum.

Lots of tree squirrels in camp. One darting across my path looked different. Turned out to be a Dwarf Mongoose living under the spreading root mass of a palm tree.

Owls: Verreaux’s Eagle, Barred, Pearl-spotted, Scops. Doves: Red-eyed, Mourning, Laughing, Ring-necked, Green Pigeon. Kingfishers: Grey-headed, Woodlands, Pied, Brown-hooded. Storks: Openbill, Marabou, Saddle-Bill. Barbets: Crested, Black-collared. Herons: Grey, Goliath, Striated.

Grey-headed Bush-shrike, Retz’s Helmet-shrike, Puffback, Yellow-breasted Apalis, Green-backed Camaroptera, Grey-headed Sparrow, FT Drongo, Water Thick-knee, Natal Spurfowl, Egyptian Goose, Blacksmith Lapwing, Lilac-breasted Roller, White-fronted Bee-eater, Fish Eagle, White-faced Whistling Duck, Palm Swift, African Oriole, Grey Go-away Bird, Yellow-billed Oxpecker, Violet-eared Waxbill, Indian Myna, Ground Hornbill,

Then the peace was disturbed by a flurry of phone calls where we could barely hear each other and a stream of messages I couldn’t reply to. Very poor comms. All were accusing me of getting older on April Fools Day, some using rude language like ‘septuagenerian’ is there even such a thing? Time to move camp…

~~oo0oo~~

KNP – Kruger National Park

A Flying Visit

Zeens has been and gone. She arrived Saturday, we fetched her at the Richards Bay airport and then raided Woolies. We’d heard of the big floods in Natal so it seems we feared famine or being stranded in our cottage on stilts, gazing out, trapped like whats’isname on his ark. We shopped as if we were contestants in a game show, filling a trolley with two suppers and a picnic brekker and lunch. Later we ate like barons at a banquet. Good, filling, easy to prepare food. And dessert.

Saturday afternoon we drove around Umlalazi Nature Reserve, and walked to the beach – a short 100m over the dune on a boardwalk.

Then Sunday we drove about two hours – first north, then west at the Mtubatuba turnoff to iMfolosi, as it’s now spelt.

Found our usual breakfast spot, then the big picnic spot on the Black Mfolosi river for a great lunch.

Not much game, as there’s lots of surface water and the grass is high, the bushes and trees thick with beautiful greenery. But the giraffe, zebra, wild beasts, impala, nyala, wartpigs all looking plump n healthy. Five rhino wallowing. No eles till I worked out a plan to lure them out of hiding. ‘Open the Liquorice Allsorts, Jess. Eles can’t resist the sound of the rustling of Allsorts packets.’ Jess rolled her eyes but within a minute of us chewing the sweets she said, ‘There! On that hillside!’  Just like I said, eight eles as we were leaving.

Action shot: A swallow, a butterfly and some rhino.

Our best – and unusual – sighting was a very large herd of vultures on the hoof. Over a hundred I’d guess, on the ground.

We decided it was a VAN – Vultures Annual Necrofest, something like a funeral undertakers convention, like AVBOB. After they’d done caucussing and some lobbying for more lions in the park, they were going to change into their mournful tuxedos for the dinner and ball that evening. Offal on the menu.

On the way out, an oncoming car waved to attract our attention, then pointed up to the sky. There they were, lots of them, wheeling around lazily in the thermals, doing the Nekhbet waltz at the sky ball.

Hat tip to Jess, sitting quietly in the back: We would not have spotted the vultures or the eles, as both were far away, and me n Zena were nattering about the olden daze; but Jessie’s eagle eyes did.

Another big supper, a good night’s sleep, followed by a Jessie breakfast and then we had to take Zeens back to the metropolis of Richards Bay already. She came in on a 30-seater, but as Jess and I left, a short 737 flew in, so I think Zeens left in a bigger plane.

We were lucky with the weather – not too hot for us, tho Z felt the heat and humidity. We stuck her in the aircon’d room so she got good sleeps. And she’s always welcome – she’s kind to Jess!

~~oo0oo~~

Vakansie Drama

Vacation; Holiday; Spans of sea and sand and sun, and fish in the aquarium; That’s a lekker place; For a hol.i.day!

Us Vrystaters went to  Durban once on a lekker-by-die-see holiday. Back in the sixties. Oldest sister Barbara got stung by a bluebottle.

Over the years Mom has related the tale often about how the dreaded blue ‘Portuguese Man O’ War’ stung her poor child.

But today it was worse! Things took a more dramatic turn! She told the familiar tale again, and then got to the part where poor Barbara was ‘attacked by the Spanish Armada.’

~~oo0oo~~

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war

KNP alone Feb 2023 – Jejane

The BIG Kruger Park FLOODS

I was camping in Berg n Dal camp in the SE of the park around 8th Feb 2023. It rained quite hard in the night. My AHA camper stayed warm n dry, passing the test, so I was pleased about that!

Steady rain continued while I packed up, aiming north and west for a lon-anticipated visit to a new place.

East at first towards the main N-S road in the park, then North, Headed for Skukuza. On the easterly leg, three sopping wet little lion cubs emerged from the wet grass and crossed the tar road all alone. Hopefully their mother/s were nearby.

Seventeen kilometres South of Skukuza I tried an alternative route a dirt road. The sign said Skukuza 19km, so slightly longer, but the dirst roads always seem more enticing. A few k’s on, a stream crossed the road about 40m wide, shallow except for a section on the far side where the main current ran and I had no way of determining the depth in that 10m strip. I stared a while but then turned back. Discretion. It was still raining steadily.

North of Skukuza toward Tshokwane, all side roads had signs up Road Closed, or branches blocking them off.

The next day 9th Feb, I got to Kai and Mandy’s lodge in Jejane, on land bordering Kruger Park – and open to the park, fences down – on the east side. What a beautiful place, that I had heard of years and was visiting for the first time.

We heard the next morning that Tshokwane got 340mm in 10hrs the next day! Whoa! That’s buckets!

More and more roads were closed, then camps were closed . .

Then the whole KNP closed – A rare occasion!

Within a day or two they started re-opening section by section, bridge by bridge and camp by camp..
..
I enjoyed a great stay at Jejane, leaving on the morning of the 13th.

Hold My Beer!

When Aitch and I were dating I got invited to a farewell party in Westville. Mike Coppinger and Jumbo Williams were leaving for Zambia to hop onto the Zambezi and kayak their way to the Indian Ocean and they needed a bunch of fellow kayakers to drink them on their way.

We met there after work and it was a festive opskop with a lot of hooligans in a well-stocked pub. After a few pints I took control of the situation and demonstrated who was in charge by casually suggesting to Aitch that we leave my car there and she drive me home at the end of this excellent jol as I could see it was going to be a big one. Then she could give me a lift back to my car in the morning.

Well . .

She looked me dead in the eye and ordered two beers. Proceeded to say Me Too whenever I had another, something she really was not actually equipped to do. Soon she was rather wobbly and as I had also had a few, we decided to call a taxi and leave both cars behind.

Gave me a hard time that one for the full twenty six years I knew her.

~~oo0oo~~

Mtunzini

Mtunzini, Zululand, KZN North Coast. A new chapter begins after eighteen months in the metropolis of Mtwalume, KZN South Coast.

We’ve had a very friendly welcome, a common refrain being, ‘Watch, Now You’re Here You’ll Never Leave.’

Also my landlord must have spoken to Brooose, my previous landlord. He said, Now that I’ve met you I’ll send a gardener once a week to mow the lawn, as I can see it’s not your thing. How else could he have worked that secret out?

First day’s birds:

Eastern Golden Weaver, Dark-backed Weaver, White-eared Barbet, Hadeda, Hamerkop, Yellow-rumped Tinker, Palm Swift, European Bee-eater, Puffback, Red-eyed Dove, Yellow-bellied Greenbul, Redcapped Robin-chat, Purple-crested Turaco, Purple-banded (or Marico)  Sunbird, Olive Sunbird, Emerald Cuckoo, Klaas Cuckoo, Trumpeter Hornbill, Gorgeous Bush-shrike, Narina Trogon, Yellow-billed Kite, Burchell’s Coucal, Golden-tailed Woodpecker, Woolly-necked Stork.

Jess was surprised that unfurnished meant zero furniture, but I said, ‘We Have Plenty Jess’ and unpacked our fine aluminium folding camping table, two comfortable camping chairs and the mattress from the camper. Manie took a good look at that and offered to return the furniture he’d just schlepped off  to store in his garden cottage after his last tenant left. Another bonus!  These are kind people.

Meantime Willie had almost beaten us back home to deliver the fridge and microwave from his second-hand store.

In Feb I spotted at last what I’d been hearing regularly from my stoep – A Yellow-streaked Greenbul, coastal forest special.

~~oo0oo~~

A Fine Vic Falls Claret

Ancient O of Maritz Borough was smuggling red wine in his checked bag in the hold of one of those aircraft that doesn’t have propellors, and flies high enough so the pressure drops, making the pressure inside the corked wine bottle way higher than the rarefied air outside. This means the cork ejaculates and your underpants in that same suitcase get dyed a dramatic color that makes it look like . . well, nevermind.

He was trying to save on his dollar spend on his imbibing habit, and that frugal trick came back to bite him where the underpants stained.

Compounding his distress, his binoculars were ruined. They should have been round his neck, but they were also in the hold packed securely next to his voluminous white Y-front underpants and the multiple bottles of smuggled red wine that I’ve just ratted on him about.

So on the bus ride to the old Vic Falls hotel he announced mournfully to the delight and mirth of his good and unsympathetic friends that while his binocs had been clear before, they now had lost their clarity and this made the view through them look a bit “Clarety.”

Rather good for a fella from Sleepy Hollow, what?!

– Vic Falls as seen thru those binocs –

Full disclosure: He said nothing about his underpants, I invented that part of the story, but it must have been true, hey?

~~oo0oo~~

Clarens en route to Afriski

Winter 2010 – The Soccer World Cup frenzy was in full swing and I was pleased we were getting away from it all, off to the the relative tranquility of Afriski resort, high in the Lesotho mountains. The kids LOVED their winter skiing holidays!

En route we made our customary brunch stop in the village of Clarens and of course I had to inform our traveling companions, Andrew and Tracey Ogilvie, joining us for their twin girls’ first skiing holiday, that I had known the mayor of Clarens in the olden days. Actually, his son, the FSOC. America has POTUS and FLOTUS, so we can have Hizzoner, The First Son Of Clarens, right?

As I told my stories yet again poor Aitch just had to listen and try not to roll her eyes too hard – (btw, heard a good one: ‘rolled my eyes so hard I almost fell over backwards’).

Hilarious stories like: The TV repeater aerial and car battery on top of Mt Horeb and the walkie-talkie conversations twixt town and top that ensued; The Clarens telephone sentrale saying “34? No, Stevie’s not there, he’s at the Goldblatts, I’ll put you through;” Hilarious, right?

Oh well, Andrew seemed to enjoy them. He’s polite that way.

We were there just before the Soccer World Cup opening ceremony and the first game (Bafana the host nation vs Mexico). The Clarens central grassy square was crowded – a million kids dressed in Bafana yellow, blowing their zulufelas, I mean vuvuzelas and marching around aimlessly in neat lines. We blew out of there and mercifully, the radio reception soon got too poor to listen in.

If it wasn’t for bladdy satellites we would have been totally isolated up on the high mountains, too. So we had to watch some of the games in the pub. Civilisation is overrated.

~~oo0oo~~

telephone sentrale – the telephone exchange, in those days a real live human being who knew what was going on in town and dorp

dorp – village

vuvuzela – instrument of one-note aural torture; probly modeled on the instruments that toppled Jericho

Punda Maria Waterhole

Pre-sunrise at Punda Maria camp waterhole. I decide to make coffee to ‘take with,’ so it’s fully light when I get into the hide, and the sun is about to show. It’s Feb 2024

The resident Egyptian Geese, Blacksmith Lapwings, Three-banded Plovers; and foam nest frog nests are there.
A Bearded Woodpecker drums a tattoo in a dead tree while a Cape Turtle Dove exhorts me to Work Harder. Good luck with that, I’ve been ignoring them for almost four years now.
Two damp Striped Kingfishers sit in the falling mist, not quite a drizzle, giving their trilling call. A Brown-hooded Kingfisher silent nearby. A Tawny-flanked Prinia going crazy, scolding something I can’t see.
Also Fork-tailed Drongo, Red-backed Shrike, Cinnamon-breasted Bunting, Chinspot Batis, Pintail Whydah, Blue & Lipstick waxbills (I don’t like the word ‘common’), Paradise Whydah, Red-billed Oxpecker, European & Carmine Bee-eaters; Greater blue-eared Glossy Starling, GHS girls (Grey-headed Sparrows), Laughing, Emerald & Cape Turtle Doves; Mosque, Barn & Lesser-striped Swallows;  Puffback & Red-back Shrikes; Red-billed Quelea flock; Red-Billed firefinch, Indigo bird, Lilac-breasted Roller, Crested Barbet,  Grey Goway Bird, Black-crowned Tchagra, Arrow-marked Babbler, Yellow-bellied Greenbul, Dusky & Paradise flycatchers; Long-billed Crombec, White-browed (Hooligans) Robin-chat. A great morning.

Somewhere in the middle distance eles rumble and baboons bark.
A flock of White Helmet-shrikes – The Seven Sisters – fly into the hide tree just a few metres from me. I get a blurry pic.

A skreee from a Blacksmith Lapwing announces a raptor and there he is: A Little Sparrowhawk strafes low over the water, then banks up and lands in a tall mopani tree too far away for a definite ID, but his size tells me he’s a Little.

Now those eles arrive to drink, and one drops a huge dump while doing so. I zoom in on their dry skin.

Uh oh! Three primates enter the hide. Loud talk and cigarette smoke sets off my internal alarm. Oh well, I enjoyed a lovely couple of early morning hours alone at the hide. Time to wake Jess up for breakfast in the hut she hired after tiring of camping!

~~oo0oo~~

Places nearby

Luvhuvhu river banks
White-fronted Bee-eater
Collared & White-bellied Sunbirds
Brubru Kurrichane Thrush
Black flycatcher
White-crowned Lapwing
Bob the Sandpiper (common)
Marsh Sandpiper
Orange-breasted Bush-shrike
Tambourine Dove

Kloppersfontein waterholes
Grey & Black-headed Herons
White-faced Duck
Whiskered Tern
White-backed & Hooded Vultures

Outside the park, near Pafuri Gate

Nthakeni Bush Camp
Dark-capped Bulbul
Golden-tailed Woodpecker
Black-headed Oriole
Good Lord Deliver Us Nightjar
Wood & Pearl-spotted Owlets
Blue Waxbill
Bearded Scrub-robin
Blue-Grey (ashy) & Paradise Flycatchers
Green-backed Camaroptera
Green-winged Pytilia

Red-billed Firefinch dancing on a perch holding a tiny twig with leaflets.

*put video here *

Golden-breasted Bunting
Willow Warbler
Mosque Swallow

Emerald spot Dove
Chinspot Batis
Spectacled Weaver
Klaas’ Cuckoo


Cattle bells plink-klonking as they graze along the Mutale river

~~oo0oo~~

That Punda Maria waterhole at night:

Kosi Bay Again

Twenty years on, we’re here again. Me and Jess. Thanks to her, we have actually booked ahead and are staying in a comfortable chalet at Kosi Bay Lodge. She loves it, there’s DSTV and good phone signal. Also a restaurant that makes great food.  Really tasty grub. Oh, and some nature outside. You go, Dad.

It’s too windy for boat trips on the lakes, so I walk the grounds and drive around the area – Ezemvelo’s Kosi Bay camp. Utshwayelo Kosi Mouth Lodge – while Jess just chills. Good birding, including one I seldom see, an Eastern Nicator. My pictures were just shadowy blobs, so here’s one from a good camera:

Note: All the camps are quite far from the beaches, and as the only one that is actually on the lakeshore, Ezemvelo’s Kosi Bay Camp is, for my money, by far the best option.

~~oo0oo~~

Last we were here we camped at the Ezemvelo Camp, and Jess was young enough to enjoy the swing I rigged up using an umbrella pole and tie-down straps.

Out on the lakes in 2003 – Greg Bennett loaned us his rubber dinghy and Yamaha.

Over. Over.

I told Steve Reed’s Clarens TV story at a 70th birthday held in a lovely home in Maun on the banks of the Thamalakane river one evening. Over.

Sally-Ann modestly said, Well I Can’t Top That One, and then proceeded to do just that, telling a hilariously disastrous tale of her mobile safari outfit getting their first walkie talkie radios so she could keep in touch with her 4X4 vehicles out in the wild.

The next safari launched. Off went the vehicles, the drivers and the clients, off into the wonderful wild of Botswana. Just a few short hours later, Sally-Ann eagerly called them up from ‘Head Office,’ her first time to be in touch with her drivers out in the wild!

Calling Safari 1. Over.
Safari 1 here. Over.
How you guys doing? Over.
Um, not so good. Over.
What’s up? Over.
Well, we’ve rolled the Landrover over. Over.

~~oo0oo~~

Peeping Tom

I felt like a Peeping Tom! Just a few metres below me, in clear water, naked bodies frolic’d underwater. One gave a tiny fart and it bubbled up to the surface. They kept their heads down as long as they could, but every now and then they’d have to stick their noses out to breathe. Sometimes just their nostrils, sometimes eyes and nostrils. A mouth-breathing hippo would have a major problem.

Fish nibbled at their thick hides and a terrapin shuffled past them underwater, making sure not to get underfoot.

A hippo pod lurking in a pool. Up close!  Often seen from afar in brown muddy water; only once before seen this close. This time was below a bridge across the Letaba river in the Kruger National Park. The other time was in even clearer water in Tsavo National Park, at Mzima Springs in Kenya.

https://videopress.com/v/5GGbfebZ?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

~~oo0oo~~

Winter Wetland Birding

Jess and I are snugly ensconced in the old Wakkerstroom Hotel, established for our comfort in 1869. We’re ‘camping’  and eating comfort food and (me) drinking Old Brown Sherry. Jess has stayed indoors in front of a cheerful fire all day. Well-ensconced, the lazy bum. I ventured out to the winter wetland for some interesting birding. Here are my usual amateur pics – some feathers were too fast for me as usual, but I did get these.

The first three all have ‘African’ in their name: Rail, Swamphen and Snipe. The little one is a Stonechat.

Here’s my clearest pic – another African Snipe. He froze and waited politely while I focused. Check the deep orange / russet on his tail.

Ducks – Southern Pochard, Shelduck, Yellowbilled Duck, Red-billed Teal, Hottentot Teal, Egyptian Goose, Cape Shoveler; Herons – Purple and Black-headed; Cattle Egret; African Snipe, African Rail, African Swamphen, Black Crake, Little Grebe, Moorhen, Cape Wagtail, Hadeda, Sacred Ibis, Helmeted Guineafowl, Pied Kingfisher, Blacksmith Lapwing, Bokmakierie, Fiscal Shrike, Reed Cormorant, Black-winged Kite, Stonechat.

Cherry on top as the light started fading over the wetland open water:

Three otters appeared and started baljaar‘ing in the smooth water, creating beautiful ripples and wakes in the sunset-coloured water.

baljaar – frolic

I forgot to include Jess and the hotel! Here they are, waiting for breakfast to be served. That’s the menu on the wall; they should add a chicken to represent the eggs.

Nocturnal Noises

Plaf Plaf Plaf Plaf Plaf (growing louder) *Huff Puff Huff* Plaf Plaf Plaf Plaf ( fading away)
Ermigawd I’m back in the Kruger Park.

The Kruger’s most abundant dangerous mammal is jogging round n round, earphones on, carrying a bottle of ‘pure’ water trucked in from hundreds of miles away, belching diesel fumes.

And again. And again. Eight laps at least, three joggers, running separately. All seem to be wearing Adidas three sizes too big, judging by the hollowness of the Plaf. Then peace descends. They’re finished. Or, Deo Volente, been eaten by a lion.

We’re camping in Letaba camp. Now the evening sounds can begin. I’m waiting for a Pearl-spotted Owlet, but nope, first to call is the Barred, then later the Scops owls.
Hyenas whoop; Hippos guffaw and snigger at their own dirty jokes; fart jokes, I bet. A Bushbaby cries, followed by a loud bellow. An Ele? No, more bovine. A Buffalo?

Must remember the rule though: For any mystery noise in a game reserve, always suspect Homo sapiens, so I can’t rule out a happy camper’s bowels being the source.

Then a Spotted Eagle Owl; Then – quieter and much nearer – another hyena? I roll onto my back to free both ears so I can listen in stereo.

Nope, just Jess having a mild little argument in her sleep, half sleep-talking. Sleep-mumbling.

~~oo0oo~~

The next night the same sounds, plus a lion’s roar. When it gets light I go for a walk along the Letaba river boundary of the camp. Lazybones Jess grunts ‘No’ and rolls up tighter under her duvet, so she misses out on seeing a distant pride of lionesses and cubs on the flood plain.