Another morning with Notch and the joys of black cotton mud!

At first light this morning we found our man 'Notch', who was making his way near to where we had left him (Cul De Sac) the previous night and seemed to be headed toward Balloon plains (a frequent hang our for Notch and sons). As always he was looking mighty fine for his 11 years (approx) and moved with relative ease despite carrying a stomach full of wildebeest!. We had him all to ourselves and tracked him across the 'football pitch' for a little while until he settled not too far from the bottom of Serena. We got a few nice shots and the opportunity to get a little video of him, but most of the time just sat, absorbed and watched as he stomped across his land.

As always time with our big man is always special, its impossible not to get attached to an animal we have followed and photographed for nearly 5 years now. It seems only 5 minutes ago that we photographed him and his young sons on the Musiara Marsh, its scary how time flies!

We then had a wander down to the rest of the Mgoro pride, who were very quiet and resting, probably exhausted after a crazy few days! 'Grimace' had remained with the pride overnight whilst Notch had gone off 'on his rounds'.

On the way to the Mgoro lions we had also seen some Wildebeest herds again congregating, this time around main crossing. However, as there were quite a few cars both sides, and as we had seen many amazing crossings already in the last few days we decided to have a drive further afield for a change of scenery before coming back to 'our' pride later.

After having a nice drive along the bottom of the escarpment, seeing plenty of game we noticed it was getting pretty wet, but the Land Rover was happy to negotiate the wet sticky mud. Well, that was to a point!. We had stopped to look at a Hyena den and no sooner after we had left we suddenly encountered a huge patch of black cotton mud. In retrospect perhaps we should have possibly taken option B, going off road and around the mud. However, instead we decided to 'abide' by the off road rule and have a crack at going through it, after all if we got stuck then we got stuck and the world would not stop revolving in trying!.Its not the first time we have become stuck and wont be the last!.  So, option A was not such a great idea and yep, we got stuck!.  However, there was no point in worrying or making calls to our friends for help though as we have pretty much have all we need to get ourselves out alone and so this is what we did! Out came the ground pins which we knocked into the ground and with the winch wire connected to the pins Andy skillfully manoeuvred the vehicle using the winch at a right angle away from the mud. Within 20 minutes of getting stuck we were free, job done, nice and easy! Never under estimate the suction power of black cotton mud!

As I write this blog we are again alone with Notch this evening who as we thought had made his passage to balloon plains where we found him this afternoon (after seeing another spectacular Rhino and briefly a young female cheetah close to the Sundowner Hill area) There Notch sits high up on the rocks in one of his favourite vantage points surveying the savannah all around, such a nice way to finish the day, but time now to retreat to camp and get dinner cooking.