Africa - Day 12 - 05-12-2025

 After a nice relaxing evening back in Johannesburg, we all met for breakfast at 8:00 which also meant I got to sleep in for the first time since getting here. It was nice to sleep until 7:15!

After breakfast, we packed up the last of our stuff and checked out of the hotel.  A shuttle service picked us up for the 45-minute drive across the city to another smaller airfield, where we were met by a handler that walked us through baggage check, customs, and introduced us to the pilots.  The pilots were great and greeted us before heading out to the plane to prepare for the trip.

We boarded what was a great little bush plane and headed up Mashatu.  The flight was about 90 minutes, crossing South Africa before once again crossing into Botswana.  Once we landed, we went to customs, at what was a very tiny airport, and we were the only ones there. We filled out the same paperwork we have had to do a few times now, and then our bags were put into a small walled off room where the “customs agents” came in and randomly picked 4 bags to search.  The search consisted of looking inside each bag for about 1 minute, just moving a couple of things around and we were then released to get into the jeeps that would take us to camp.

The drive was about 45 minutes from the airstrip to the camp and along the way we saw a huge number of vultures, sitting near a Impala kill that was being finished up by a few Jackals.  The carcass was mostly just the skeleton, and once the Jackals leave it, the vultures will clean it up so it will be nothing but bones laying out there.

We got to camp, were shown our cabins, and then met for a late lunch, before boarding our first game drive here.  On the drive, we were told about a leopard that was in the area and her 10 month old cub, and so we went looking to see if we could find either or both of them.  It took a while, but the guides were good and eventually we found the cub, sitting way up high on some rocks, a little too far to get a good shot of it, especially since night was closing in fast.  The cub did come down a lot closer to us as we all sat there and watched it, but then eventually climbed up high into a tree close by, trying to catch a bird or something.  Once it didn’t have any success, it went to sleep up there, and we headed back to camp since it was now very dark outside.  It was a long, but fun first day here.