We arrived to Bateleur Bushveld camp on a really hot day. We had booked four nights there as we remembered that it was a really nice and quiet place where, although game was not plentiful, sightings of leopard were good and there was one residing near the camp and often seen by visitors.

The ranger in charge of the camp confirmed that the female leopard was still there and that she now had two cubs so our expectation of spotting them grew significantly. We would not have bothered as, to our disappointment, we never even heard the beast.

Although extremely hot, we did enjoy our game drives and had fun watching and taking pictures of the birds and small mammals coming to drink from the bird bath as the place was bone dry. Some of the birds that came were Grey lourie, Crested barbet, African black-headed oriole, Starlings, babblers, laughing doves, cordon blue waxbills, African red finches, yellow, red and grey bill hornbills and others. We also had genet (at night in the camtrap), squirrels and dwarf mongooses during the day.

An African waxbill enjoys a bath.

The second evening we noted an accumulation of cloud towards the west (I know because the sun went down there!) and the following morning we detected a few dried raindrops on the car. We were quite surprised as we are at the dry season. The day started to get cloudy and after sunset an amazing storm built up, also on the west with lots of thunder and lightning.

Later that evening the skies opened up and it rained for the whole night and the following morning! I got up and found that the wind had taken away a tray where we had hanged some of our clothes to dry and I found them, together with a towel buried in the mud. Our front veranda had about 7-8 cm of water that needed to be brushed away before it entered our bungalow and to enable us to we move about.

But that was not all. The temperature must have dropped 20 degrees and with the strong wind it became very cold. Luckily we had rented a two bedroom bungalow so we retreated to the second bedroom and organized it to have our meals there, just like flood refugees!

We left the following day, still under some rain and saw that the previously very dry landscape now had lots of water accumulated in places that were dry and dusty the day before. We estimate that the rainfall must have been about 50mm, what I consider a very unusual downpour for the season.

Needles to say that the day after the rains the animals switched from survival to rainfall mode and disappeared from the crowded areas where they were up to the day before so, finding them became very hard, a situation that would last until we left the park.