Laura's Safari Journal: Day 3...

We woke before dawn, the air still cool, the sky just beginning to pale. Roan’s sharp eyes caught something in the distance - a flicker of movement in a tree. He handed me the binoculars, and there she was: a leopard, frozen in a branch, watching us as intently as we watched her. For a fleeting second, only Roan, Morgan, and I had the privilege of seeing her - and then she leapt to the ground and melted into the bush. It was quick, but it was our first leopard, and it set the tone for the day.

Later, we spotted a tower of giraffes standing tall and still, their eyes fixed on a point beyond us. At first, we thought they were watching us, but their gaze never wavered. Then I felt it - that uncanny sense of being watched. The hair rose on the back of my neck. Seconds later, Morgan saw them: three lions lying low in the grass, tails flicking against the flies. A young male, maybe three years old, with an older lioness and her cub.

We followed at a distance, but the cub was skittish - darting farther from his mother with each step - and we didn’t want to add to the tension by pressing closer. So we let them slip away, swallowed by the tall grass.

The morning wasn’t finished. At a watering hole, three young bull elephants splashed and played, tossing arcs of water with their trunks. One dropped so deep into the pool that he emerged two-toned - dark and dripping below, dusty gray above. Nearby, a monitor lizard sunned itself atop a termite mound, nearly invisible to all but Roan’s well-trained eye.

By midday, the sun pressed down hard. Ace grinned and said something I thought was a joke: “Jump in.” I looked at the water, skeptical. But he assured me that hippos and crocs stick to the deeper pools. Roan and Ace waded in first, and I followed. The water was warm, the sand soft as silk. That quick dip left me feeling refreshed as we headed back to camp.

That afternoon, instead of another drive, Ace and Morgan poled us across the river in a mokoro for a walking safari. Ace had us laughing when he said, “If we capsize and you feel like you're drowning - just stand up.” On foot, everything was magnified. Every twig snap. Every rustle in the grass. We hadn’t gone far when we found an elephant resting against a palm tree, eyes closed, dozing in the heat. We lingered, hushed, watching the giant breathe.

As we walked, we studied tracks crisscrossing the sand and read stories in dung. Morgan shared a San belief - that seeing a mole rat during the day foretells a death in the family. We hadn’t seen the animal itself, just signs it had tunneled through the elephant’s dung. Still, the idea lingered. And later, as Morgan, Roan, and I were hurried out of the hippo’s territory during our mokoro ride back, I felt a flicker of superstition rising with my pulse.

Dinner by Chef Issa was exquisite as always, but the evening was made all the more magical by the lunar eclipse, which cloaked the scenery in pure darkness, except for the twinkling stars overhead.

Laura xxx