25/04/2024 My 4th blog on Namibia

 The maximum temperature in the Charente today is 13⁰C, minimum 11⁰C.  Showers on and off all day. South/West wind of 15 km/h with gusts up to 30 km/h.  Spring seems to be far away at present!!

I apologise for my blogs being so slow but we have lots to catch up with in the garden and the new barn (plus its smaller garden as well).  The continual on/off rain is not making life easy.  In my last blog, I promised you lots of lion photos so here are some of them, I took a lot!!

We were on our last evening at Etosha National Park on the 24th February. Obi, our incredible guide and driver had an odd feeling that we should drive just a little bit further before returning to camp when the gates closed.  How right his feeling was.... his eagle eyes spotted first one lion and then the second one suddenly appeared.

Just snoozing.

The second male appeared.

He went off and had a good scratch.....

before marking his territory.  It was thought that these two must be brothers as they tolerated each other happily.

Watching me watching you!!

We watched them for a while, then Obi decided to take a look a bit further down the road, intuition telling him once again where to look.

The eagle eyes again spotted this lioness hiding in the grass...

Then lioness number two arrived looking behind her, Obi immediately said she is looking for her cub...

Sure enough a few minutes later this teenager appeared.

Time was getting very short and after a successful evening we had to rush back to camp (at the speed limit!) before the gates were closed and we would have been in trouble.

After a good dinner at the camp, Obi suggested that we had a bit of a sleep in the next day as we were nearing the end of our safari.  He was aware that the very early mornings were getting very difficult for us.  I quietly mentioned that it might be nice to see if the lions were around before we left and Obi jumped at the suggestion.  So the next day we set out early again and in almost the same spot as the night before we saw a lioness with two cubs, the guess was they were only a couple of months old.

So adorable and they were happily playing on a log...

Ooops.

We were so busy watching them that we almost missed the 6 teenagers arriving on the other side of the car.  I did not manage to get them all together but I did get 5 of them.

Suddenly Obi said listen, and sure enough, we heard a roar in the distance.   Was it Dad saying they had a kill and was he calling Mum plus the youngsters.  It seems that was the case as Mum took off looking over her shoulder for the cubs,  she moved on to the road and headed towards the roar that we had heard.

Come on Mum, Dad is calling us.

An ambush in progress 😃

We finally spotted the kill which we thought was not very big and it was well hidden in the long grass

  Dad had moved off relaxing with what we suspected was a full belly....

The remainder was left to the lionesses who had been quite secretive and the playful cubs.

We then headed back out of Etosha for a one-night stop over before being dropped off for our stay in Swakopmund.  Just before leaving the reserve, we saw the biggest herd of elephants, but that is another story.

Thank you Obi for a wonderful trip to Etosha  (and of course the rest of the safari) for your time and patience with us oldies.