The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 43: Drama in the Riverbed

    This is our last full day at Mashatu Game Reserve before we head for home, and already the sun is setting.

    I am very sorry this wonderful trip is coming to a conclusion.   I wish I could stay here forever and ever.   Or at least, the foreseeable future.   I'm getting low on memory cards for the cameras, though, and I refuse to download the photos onto my little travel computer or an external drive, and then format the cards I'm using.   That's what everyone else does, but I'm not confident enough in my tech skills and am afraid I will lose all the photos.

    I bring home the cards with all the photos still on them, even though they are also copied to another external drive.   In fact, I still have the original memory cards with photos for every trip I've taken since I became interested in photography.   I sometimes need them to restore catalogues in my photo software.

    Anyway, we drop down into the riverbed.   It's in shade, and that's hard to expose for to get vibrant photos.   Everything looks blah.

    We come across this fellow sound asleep in the shade in the riverbed.

    We aren't going to get anything from him, other than a head raise to see what's there.

    He goes back to sleep, and we drive on.

    We find a leopard, also enjoying a snooze in the cool sand of the riverbed.   She, however, gets up, has a drink of water, and goes on a walk.

Video:   (Cell phones don't record well in the shade.)

    We watch as the leopard walks along the high riverbank.

Just an aside:   I asked Bashi if he had ever seen the river cut full of water.   He said he had, and that sometimes it overflows and floods adjacent land.   As for how fast it flowed, he said, "You would not dare put a boat in it."

    Suddenly, something ahead catches her attention.

    I look upstream and spot another leopard coming this way.

        The two leopards continue to converge.    The anxiety and tension among us are almost palpable.   I'm holding my breath.

    No one says a word.   We are all concentrating on the drama unfolding before us.

        The first leopard turns, and, crouching low and using some fallen branches for cover, moves out of the riverbed.

   

    Once the first leopard is out of sight, our guide moves up closer to the second leopard.   I'm hoping she doesn't catch the scent of the first leopard, but it is almost inevitable that she will.   The two are less than a hundred feet apart when the first leopard disappears.

    Someone, maybe me, asks what would happen if the two leopards meet.  The guide says, "They will fight."   He says the first leopard is the daughter of the second leopard, but that means nothing.   

    Leopards are solitary animals and very territorial, though young females often establish their own territory adjacent to their mother's.

The "blah" of photographing animals in the shade.

    Here, the second leopard enters an area where the late sun penetrates the river bottom.

      She walks right toward us.

    And passes in front of one vehicle.    Our tension is still high, but somewhat abated by the disappearance of the first leopard.    That won't matter if the second leopard comes across the first's tracks.

    To my dismay, the leopard goes up the bank.  Perhaps she has the scent of the first, after all.  

    Our guide hurries to find a trail leading up the riverbank and then searches for either of the two leopards in the riverine forest.   We can't find either of them.

    We compare notes with each other and agree that this event has all the tension of a well-wrought movie scene.   Except, it was real.

    The river bottom before we leave it.

    The sun has almost set, and it's time to head back to camp for our final night at Mashatu Lodge.