I think we must have seen our allowed animal quota in the first few days in the park. Even the birds seemed to have gone into hiding. The drive back to Shingwedzi was nice but uneventful. The camp was fairly quiet, but the warm weather had returned. Up in the mid thirties during the day and cooler come evening time, well if 28c at 18h00 can be described as cooler!
Plenty of lion activity in the area if all the evening and morning roaring was an indication. However none that we saw, except a lone male on leaving Shingwedzi on the drive to Tsendze. Also no sight or sound of the Giant Eagle Owls, shame.
We did however get our dose of excitement. Sitting mid afternoon relaxing, the birds started to chirp just next to us. Sue was suddenly up, 'snake!'. It appeared around the base of the tree where we were sat and proceed to hide under the pile of wood I had got out for the evening braai. It wasn't huge, perhaps 45cm long, but we later identified it as a young Mozambican Spitting Cobra! It may have been half its adult size but its spitting venom would still pack a mighty punch. They can spit up to 2.5m! I persuaded it to move on and made sure it was well away from us before I stopped following it.
The next day Sue came rushing back from the ablutions, she had seen the snake again. A bit different this time as it was in the process of swallowing a small bat! It would be like me trying to swallow a badger in one go! Well it eventually did, one big lump in it's belly. We left it to find somewhere quiet to sleep it off.
The pool at camp was a just the place to be late morning or early afternoon. Cold, but refreshing! We had to make use of it as no such luxury would be awaiting us back at Tsendze, just the option of a cold shower if needed.
As mentioned we had a brief glimpe of a male Lion on leaving the camp, but well past halfway to Tsendze we had a better sighting!
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