Buffalo

You wouldn’t say so, because buffalo traverse in large herds, but they are actually quite hard to find. After an afternoon speeding from one end of the Thornybush Game Reserve to the other, we finally found this old, angry, solitary male glaring at us after he had to get up from his personal spot on the beach. Hrmph.

Cubs

One of the highlights of our trip was finding this mother lion with two cubs in a river bed. At this age – maybe three months old – they are still reliant on mother’s milk and too little to engage in the hunt with the rest of the pride, so mother will hide them for long periods to go hunting and come back for feeding and play time.

Falling…

A leopard dozing in a tree above us. In fact, he was dozing so hard that he lost his balance and needed some claw action to prevent him from falling out of the tree and on top of… well, me. That was a scary moment!

At first sight

It was a long journey from the Netherlands to Tangala Safari Camp in #Thornybush Nature Reserve. We were just in time to catch the departure of the afternoon safari drive – and this was the first picture I took. What a welcome in South Africa!

On second glance

Sometimes you take a photo and you come back home and it just doesn’t do anything for you. If that’s the case, it may be worthwhile to take a second look at it a couple weeks later. This one matured pretty well!

Madeira 12: Boaventura

Our final levada hike! In the northern part of Madeira there is more rain, but we were lucky with the weather again. Not with the levada, though, because a boulder had fallen onto the ledge and we couldn’t pass. It took us a bit to find a way around. In the end, it was more than worth it. Watch the video for the amazing views!