All through the night I listened to the deep low roar of lions. As the night wore on, the roars seemed to be getting closer and closer. At 5am, just before our wake up call, I heard the lions right outside our tent.

Someone came and knocked on our door and we started to get ready for the day.

After breakfast we met with Bee and the other ladies for a game drive. We told Bee about the lions but he insisted that the sound was likely just baboons.  To humour us, he and our tracker, drove near our tent to look for tracks. Sure enough he found fresh tracks and we raced across the fields in search of our lions. We spent about half an hour following the tracks on the sandy roads, our guides would get out few minutes and look to the tracks. We drove over rocks and logs, through deep streams that flooded our jeep... the river crossings were a ton of fun!

They thought we were getting closer and we rounded a tree to find two male lions sharing an old kill.

We watched the lions from about ten feet as they chomped on every last rotting bone of a male Impala. When there was nothing left they got up and started to walk away. We followed the lions for about two hours, getting many good shots.

We watched the boys become very alert and rush into some deep grass and then we heard a scuffle and a mighty roar. Bee yelled, that's a Leopard roar and he zoomed off in that direction. He drove over logs and through deep ruts at warp speed to get to the Leopard. We spotted him running away in some deep grass. We got a few shots before he finally disappeared across the marsh.

We enjoyed lunch at the camp and then were taken to the airstrip to meet the rest of our &Beyond Botswana Explorer group. We waited in the shade and watched the plane land. Jakes, our guide, was on the flight.... along with Kenny and Peter from Florida.... and Christin and Yannette from California. We all loaded into the jeeps and went to our first tented camp.