At Sunset we found the lake literally packed with hippos. Even more surprising a group of six of them were up grazing on the shore - I thought you never saw hippos on land during the day. In fact these are the first hippos I've seen on land period (at least at a reasonable distance). There was also a very young baby (still mostly pink). It was amazing how many there were in a relatively small lake - counted twenty-two, and there had to be many more. We left the lake quite excited about how many hippos we'd just seen, then a hundred yards down the road there's another group of three hippos - again grazing, and this time far from the water! Again and again we saw hippos I stopped counting after forty. Basically this stretch of the Sabie river is infested.

Several hours of nothing exciting had us running for camp - we had to confirm for the night's game drive by four. Being in a hurry we of course found something interesting - three White Rhinos, and close to the road! A few minutes later just 100 yards from the camp gate was another giant bull elephant.

After confirming our reservations for the game drive we set up camp, ate a bit (Ostrich biltong and crackers for me) and just hung out for an hour.

The night drive got going a little after sunset at five thirty. It started out pretty slow, just Impala and a few birds. We did have a fantastic moonrise - the moon was giant and full. Saw another white rhino - even closer to the road than this afternoon. A large-spotted genet was the first new thing we saw. Right next to the road it looked like a cross between a ferret and a house cat - looked quite cuddly, though I didn't try to verify that. Next exciting thing was a very cute spotted hyena pup. I've never thought to us the word cute with hyenas but this definitely was - he couldn't decide if he should be afraid of us or not so very timidly sat on the edge of the road, no more than six feet from me. Caught a brief glimpse of a black and white African Civet - another cat like thing, but bigger.

Yet another cat like thing started the excitement - two lioness. We got with two yards of both of them - amazing. We turned away from them when we heard males vocalizing (roaring) nearby and went in search of the males. We found two of them and followed them back to the females. We got within feet of each of the four many times - it was totally incredible! The males were stunning.

I learned an important lesson about my camera - it doesn't focus well in the dark, it has to use the flash, and then the flash has to recharge before the camera can actually take the picture, meanwhile the animal has moved so the focus has to be redone, etceteras. Lost lots of close up lion pictures until I realized manual focus is the way to go at night!

Didn't get to see a leopard, and in general the drive was quite slow, but the close up experience with the mini-pride of lions was easily worth the time and money... And I did get to add Crocodiles, Large-spotted Genets, Lions, Common Duikers, Spotted Hyenas, African Civets, and Side Striped Jackals to the identified animal list for the day!

Back at camp I was freezing (shortly into the game drive I regretted me choice of shorts). A nice hot bath (bath tubs in campgrounds are quite civilized) and straight to bed - we're hoping to be on our way to Mozambique well before dawn.