I’m in the Kgalagadi at the moment for a short stay of six nights. Except for lot of great sightings there is also lots of other action going on at the moment!
Yesterday we had a thunderstorm that swept through Twee Revieren leaving the camp site looking like a river in flow and with my tent right in the middle of it! But the big story going on at the moment is that of the UK tourists getting a fright from a pride of 12 Lions at Rooiputs.
Here the story as it was published on Sanparks Forum by Jan Kriel;
“I have just had a word with some guests staying at Rooiputs last night which experienced a very ‘scary’ night or early morning.
As per the information I got there was a pride of about 12 lions walking through the camp and they have decided to go and rest close to three tents of three young guys which two of the guys experienced their first night ever in the African ‘bush’.
Within the pride there were some cubs and they started to play around getting closer to the tents. One of the cubs started to play with the tent while the English guests was frightened to death watching his tent being used as a play thing, while playing the one lion cub scratched the tent. the poor frightened guy inside took his flash light and shone it into the eyes of the cub trying to get him to go away.
It didn’t work as it only got the large male interested to investigate what was going on. Apparently the guest inside the tent stopped breathing because of the male lion sticking his nose through a gap in the tent caused by the youngsters playing around.
It sounded that the lions lost interest and walked off with the guests packing their stuff and decided they would not stay another night at Rooiputs and booked in at Twee Rivieren.”
This morning I came upon a group of French Tourists at Rooiputs totally unaware of the drama two nights earlier. Wonder why they are the only campers at Rooiputs at the moment….!!!!
I also managed to capture some great shots of two male lions at Auchterlonie Monday afternoon.
Tuesday afternoon I saw three lions, one male and the female stalking a Oryx. The Oryx got away after the one female lion came up to 20m from the Oryx. Nevertheless this was a great experience to see how the lions worked together to try and catch the Oryx.
Yesterday I came upon a pride of five lions at Samevloeiing in some nice warm morning light.
Later the morning I saw this female lion with two small cubs roaming between Samevloeiing and Leeudril. This was the second time I saw them this week. The cubs are still very small and this is the reason why they are alone with their mother. The Female lion will only introduce the cubs to the rest of the pride after about two months.
After lots of rain the past few weeks the Kglagadi Transfrontier parks looks really stunning. To view more of my work go to www.superimage.co.za
What a wonderful story! And your photographs are AMAZING! Thank you for sharing – the Kalagadi is one of my favourite palces on Earth.
Wish I was there.
mail me at warren@ianfleming.co.za and I will give you the full story. I was the guy in the tent. Cheers, was epic crazy, and we actually went back for another 2 nights… craziness
Hi Warren
It will be great if you can give our readers your side of the story…!!!
Gerhard
Great photos Gerhard
About 1:30 am I awoke to the sounds of Hyenas in the distance, although clearly it was not this sound that had woken me. Very quickly I hear the distinct sound of the male lions “cough”, very close to my tent. My 2 mates who had joined me had also woken and had called to me that there were lions outside to which I whispered to them to keep silent. One of the guys , my mates cousin was on his first trip to a game park and was his first night. He had never even pitched a tent before…
Soon I felt tugging and pulling on my tent. I was uncertain of what was going on and then realised that it was probably cubs that were being nosey. but then they got a little too nosey and were chewing on the ropes of my tent, severing it and causing it to collapse a good section of the tent, then they were tugging on the air mattress as the bulge was sticking through the tent.. a very frightening thought so early in the morning and in pitch darkness. I remember my heart was racing and my mouth was dry and I could barely breathe.
after a while I noticed the cubs were chewing on the zips and heard one of them give way, this being the cover of the tent, as well they were having a right good time with other apparel that we had at camp… I had a small tear in the fabric of the fly screen, maybe 10cm vertically, and when I could see that the cubs were finding some interesting to have a look at through the rip I was scared they would rip it further so I kept flashing my flashlight at them though this gap.. this seemed to scare them off and they disappeared. However I think the disturbance got the interest of the large male and he came to have a look, pushing at least half of his head into the tent through the rip making it now over half a meter. I took my flashlight and was going to shine it on and off in his eye to try and blind him a bit, but at the time actually hit him on the face just above the eye. after that he left me to some small amount of peace.
About 10 minutes or so passed and I called to my mate in the tent next to me to see if they had all left and he said that there was still a male laying not far from my tent. Not having heard anything in 5 minutes I asked again, to which he said the same thing. Thinking he may be having a laugh with me I had a look out the tent and the coast looked clear. I climbed out and shone the torch around, not realising that in fact his tent faced the opposite direction to mine, and true as bob there about 2m from where I was standing was the male lion having a sit down just staring at me. I did not even think and just made a dash for the vehicle which was parked just off the other side of camp. I then started the engine and drove around to the tents where the male was, he got up and walked off. I then took a quick drive around Rooiputs with the spotlight and saw a group of cubs about the size of a border collie and a group of females and another male, about 12 or so in total based on the number of eye reflections at the time.
After that I got my mates and we drove to have a look but only the one male was still about and one of the cubs in the long grass.
The next day we checked out of Rooiputs in fear of another 2 nights that we had booked. However our fear slowly left us a few days later and we spent our last 2 nights of the Kgalagadi back at Rooiputs, although I did sleep in the car as I felt that having a half meter rip in the door of my tent was just not a grand idea for Rooiputs.
The first morning of our stay back we actually saw the pride on the horizon at sunrise and managed to get some magical photographs and also had the big male that I believe visited me sitting just a few meters from us in the long grass just half a kilometre for camp.
Hope you enjoyed my story, if sounds like a lot of fun, but I can tell you I would never wish to go through this again. But in a way glad I did.
Hi Warren
Thanks a lot for sharing. Great story. Giggling the whole time while reading but so so glad it wasn’t me in the tent.
Gerhard
Great story. Chilling stuff. I’d love to go one day, and see this kind of wildlife, but perhaps not as close-up as that!
Lovely photos Gerhard.
Well….this is exactly the very thing that I’m afraid of!! What if the Lions start chomping on our Trailer or car tyres?? My husband and I will be camping in Rooiputs on the 29th May 2012 for the 1st time. We’ll be in an Afrispoor Trailer with a roof top tent! Iknow this may sound ridiculous to some and even hilarious to others but lets be realistic here we’re dealing with Lions!! Thanks for sharing your story Warren…glad you were all safe.
Thanks for your story. Also nice pictures. Rooiputs – booked for December 2012
Amazing story. Was at Rooiputs the weekend before and saw all those lions with their cubs very close to the camp, but fortunately not that close….. A few weeks later I was back at Rooiputs and could hear something lurking around the campsite during the night. In the morning I saw lion spores…. So happy I had not heard your story by then.