In December we were disappointed to report about the difficulty to find leopards. Now we have exciting news: The first month in 2017 brought us some fantastic leopard sightings. We even discovered  a rarely seen  leopard called "Munye". Here is our January update from the bush.

Before we go to our wildlife update, a comment on the weather. January brought us rarely seen rain. Lightning on the horizon was seen almost daily, some big storms were showering across our lodge, and a total of about 300mm of rainwater fell. This is even in the rainy season rather unusual for the dry Madikwe region. Nature is happy, and so are we.

Unfortunately, we suffered from the consequences of the storms: leaking thatched roofs (were quickly repaired), not all roads were navigable for the safaris (but all game drives took place), and our internet was interrupted for days as some hardware pieces and the satellite receiver were blown by lightning strike. Now we are back to normal. We would like to thank our guests and our business partners for the great understanding in an unusual situation.

But now to the animals. Rain and storm had no influence on the quality and frequency of our discoveries. The permanent leader of the "Big 5", the Elephant, was seen in 84% of the game drives, followed by Lion (71%), White Rhino (53%) and Buffalo (36%). A wonderful sighting was the "Kwandwe" Lion male with the three cubs. We also listened to a roaring lion, and saw one at a kill.

But the highlight was the discovery of the leopard male Munye (read more about this fantastic discovery here). The leopards are definitely back! We saw this imposing cat in one of five game drives. The cheetahs, also very popular by the guests, had an even higher chance of 1:4. Both Cheetah and Leopard we saw in wonderful sightings, eating a prey after successful hunting.

After our automatic camera at the lodge waterhole was repeatedly destroyed by elephants, we give it another try. Sean has built a small protective device, so we hope that the camera will survive this time. Some first snapshots were already published. We are curious: which animals will pass by over the next days?