I want to write you a story. It is easy, because it happened and was real. I was there, many of you were there, and WE shared it, saw it, felt it, LIVE.

It is a simple story. I will tell it in broad brush strokes, and let some images fill in the beautiful details.

It started this morning, the second of August ’08. The drive, as WE leave camp, starts with the anticipation of leopard. You, WE, saw them around the pan during the night.Thank you.

A sunrise , beautiful as always , full of mystery and promise for the awakening day. Only, many things always happen during the night . . .

A large herd of impala, young males sparing against the sunrise.

!!! WE spot the white belly of another impala, further away, dead at the base of a marula tree.

I must try to keep these words short, brushstrokes.

The impala’s eye reflects the world outside. Death seems peaceful, tranquil here by the marula tree. The bruising around the neck is clear, leopard kill . . . this explains all the activity around the pan during the night.

Must be Karula, her tracks are there, but where is she? We look, we think, we wonder . . . could she have gone to fetch one of the cubs, or is there maybe a male around?

I decide for us to go look around a little, to come back in a bit . .. just now (as we say in South Africa). We see buffalo, elephants and then we head back to the marual tree and the dead impala.

Wow!! There she is, Karula, on her kill. It got better, Tingana, classic leopard on a sunny branch.

Karula still sharing her large kill. The next was too long to tell.

Beautiful light, the careful attention of the cub that is now not the cub anymore, but an independent leopard, spending time with mom, on maybe one of the last carcasses they’ll share.

I hope the pictures will say a thousand words each. This afternoon will continue the story . . . and you can be there . . . LIVE. After all … it is in our nature.

Enjoy the beauty and live the adventure.

Pieter Pretorius