Our final day has arrived.  Up early for a morning game drive.  Rather cold in the morning.  We took the higher route this time, instead of the river route.  Usual white backed vultures, and Impala.  The Impala were in rutting season.  The male Impala looking over his herd of females is a pretty aggressive animal.  When one female appeared to wander off , the male chased after her, snorting and biting, forcing her back into the herd.  Definite case of DV.

Usual Fish Eagles in the tress, not allowed to photograph them (far too many photos of them R says and has therefore limited me to take them only if doing something v sensational such as tap dancing), but this one was eating something, so an exception was granted.  I also could not resist a photo of a LBR (banned for the same reasons by R), well three.

We again drove over to where the Lions were the previous day by the river.  This time they were rather hidden from view, so no worthwhile photographs.  Instead a far better  photograph was of a Jackal.  They were near to the lions, they must have been scavenging some of the Lion kill overnight.

Coffee break at the stretch point, don’t know why this place is any safer then other areas of the game reserve.  At this point we are allowed off the vehicles for a stretch and wander about and a coffee & biscuits.

On the way back we came across a group of Banded Mongoose.  One was being tracked and had a red collar.  They were pretty cute.  Watch the video and you will see them running along the road.

Other creatures photographed were a Yellow Billed Ox Pecker. a Swallow, not sure of the variety, none of the pictures I see of Botswana swallows quite look like mine,  Grey Heron and a Hammerkopp on the river side.  On the way out of park there is the usual group of Marabou Storks.

Down below in the river there were many pods of hippo.  A quick count of one pod showed about 40 hippo.  They are difficult to count because some stay under water for a long time, and they move about.

Back at the lodge, we check out, pay our bills and along comes the transport to the airport.  The airport is being rebuilt, so presently rather basic.  Long queues to get passports stamped.  Back to Jo’burg airport where we had a few hours to kill so looked for souvenirs.  Duty Free came up trumps, two litres of Ricard for £28 (Rosemary very pleased with that purchase), T-shirt for Steve (eventually bought a landrover one, cos was not allowed a South Africa one, and the possible animal tracks ones were not in a large enough size).