We start off July by saying farewell to Alfonso our Spanish intern.  He was a great person to have in camp and became a real team member over the month that he was here.  His passion for the bush, his politeness and impeccable english was wonderful.  We do hope to see him back in a year or so!

 The days were getting a tiny bit longer but certainly not warmer!  Everyone says that a long and heavy rain season means cold weather in winter and they were spot on.  Some unusual (for us in the dry season) cloud cover made things colder but added some contrast to the beautiful early mornings and evenings.

I was putting together a personal project of timelapse sequences so ended up spending a lot of weird moments out on the river, on rocks and all over the place trying to capture sunsets, sunrises, stars and mists.  It was intense but fun.

The colder weather brings these amazing mists that we are always going on about.  To be honest we (and all our guests without exception) just cannot get enough of them

One morning in particular was unforgetable.  After the guests had left for an early morning game drive it just got thicker and thicker.  It was amazing.   Benny actually came into the office to tell me to grab my camera.  Naturally I did.

It was a very memorable morning indeed.

But the real news for July was the sightings.  It was like everything went into overdrive.  Unbelievable.  What was really heartening was that a lot of the most spectacular sightings took place on the loops in the National Park that we have spent the last few years developing.  This is heartening as it shows that the presence there is having a positive effect and that we were right to put these loops where we did.  We were treated to four cheetah who hung around the loops for almost two weeks and were completely relaxed.  Incredible.  What was great was that all the guides (who are all kitted with decent cameras) were all getting fantastic images of these great sightings:

Sightings further north in the Shishamba area were also incredible.  The guides were regularly catching up with the Shishamba cubs:

The Luansanza bridge area also provided totally superb lion encounters with two mating couples hanging around the area for several days.  The cat sightings were just unbelievable at this point!

In between all the amazing sightings that were going on across the river in the National Park we then had another type of sighting.  I dark haired female from France.  In the form of a charming springer spaniel called Joy!  Our first ever international dog guest.  Strange but true.  So while her owner was game driving and boating Julia took Joy for walks.  I know that dogs are normally not found in remote safari camps, but she was actually very easy!

Then as the month marched to it’s end we started to position our hides.  The bee-eater hide we are very pleased with as the bee-eaters have this year made a much larger colony and in an absolutely perfect position for the hide.  Once built I spent a quiet hour or two testing it out and was very happy with it indeed!

Then at the very end of the month we had a delightful Swiss girl come out to do a canoe trail with us.  She had an absolutely great trip – including an island sleepout and a short bit of rapids running.  We were very pleased that she was happy for us to be snapping away getting some good marketing stuff as our canoe trails are getting more and more popular.  Hopefully these images give you an idea of why the trails are getting more popular.

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