Since we had been hearing the lions roaring quite often, both during nights and early in the morning we had for a while expected to run into them. Tracks were evident almost every day but the big cats kept on eluding us… One afternoon, after getting a message on the radio, saying that they were in the same area as we were, we went in search of them. We found them in the dense bush close to the river, a lioness and the famous male, Kalahari, resting during the heat of the day.
The very next evening both groups had another lion encounter, this time two females with a kill and four cubs.
At first the cubs seemed a bit shy, but after a while they were playing around with their aunt only a couple of meters away from the vehicles.
We spent some time at this exciting sighting and only got back to camp very late this night, hungry but happy.
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Apparently it was found curled up close to the road and was therefore caught and checked, before being released in much safer surroundings inside the Makalali reserve. Most of us were very excited about this, even though we felt sorry for the poor animal on the rough roads leading to the release site.