Welcome to Thabo Tholo!!

So…it’s fair to say I had a whirlwind first few days out here. After a long, sleepless flight thanks in no small part to three crying babies, I was met in Johannesburg by Becky, a guide and member of the research team also from the UK, just after 8 in the morning. After we had picked up her safari guests we then made the 4 hour journey to the reserve. On arrival we dropped off her safari guests at the local pub, rather conveniently placed right on the edge of the reserve, and then headed on into the reserve itself.

The first thing you notice about Thabo Tholo and the surrounding area is the absolutely stunning landscape; there are mountains as far as the eye can see, all brilliantly green thanks to the mix of daily temperatures in the high 30’s and fairly regular rain that make the bush comes alive at this time of year.

As we were driving down the first road in to the reserve a radio call came in that there was a leopard sighting down in a valley near to our camp; I’d not even touched base yet and already was potentially going to see a Leopard!! Having never done so in my previous two visits to Africa I was incredibly excited!! So we rushed to camp and I had a very quick introduction to Tara, the head-researcher here and my very patient teacher, and Tucker, her little Jack Russell, before we went to see if we could spot the cat. When we arrived at the sighting the leopard was sitting less than 10m from the car, but we still couldn't see him; they are frustratingly good at hiding!! Eventually we managed to spot him (seeing the tip of his tail and a few rosettes counts as far as I’m concerned), but not long after we arrived he somehow managed to give us the slip without any of us noticing, so we left and headed back to camp. On the way back they showed me an old Kudu carcass which one of the leopards had taken down late in December. 

When we got back to camp I was exhausted but absolutely buzzing from the sighting, which didn't really help me when it came to falling asleep, especially since I had to be up at 03:30 the next morning to go for a walk!!