We were up early in the morning and were soon heading towards the eastern side of the reserve. A sign on the gate set the scene and we were soon enjoying some great birding and mammal watching.

It wasn't long before we located our first pride of lions which was made up of a few females, a young male and 3 cubs. A second pride was located not too much later at a carcass which was mainly adult females with two adult males. Needless to say, we spent a considerable amount of time with these two prides, in particular the first pride, as we enjoyed the antics of the cubs. The camera shutters never seemed to stop and it was indeed quite an exercise going through all of the photos afterwards.

After eventually leaving the lions and also after a very hearty breakfast at a small restaurant tucked away up on a hill overlooking the plains as well as a very uncharacteristic Kalahari rain storm, we were back out into the field where the photographic lifers kept coming. I managed to pick up another three in the morning - Fawn-coloured Lark, Swallow-tailed Bee-eater and Marico Flycatcher. I also managed to pick up a full mammal lifer in the form of Hartmann's Mountain Zebra, but they were just too far to try and get any photos.

During the heat of the day, we once again retired back to the house and spent some time in the garden.

The late afternoon saw us heading back into the western part of the reserve where the intention was to look for my main aim for the weekend - my nemesis mammal, Aardvark. I had been searching for this mammal for probably more than 20 years and had always just been terribly unlucky with it. Prior to us arriving at Tswalu, Andrew had been bragging about how many of these he had already seen, so I knew our chances had to be good, but I was not holding my breath!! As we were driving down this one particular road, Andrew suddenly screeched to a halt and started waving madly and shouting, "THERE IT IS!!" When I first locked eyes on it, it was almost in disbelief, but soon thereafter, my brain clicked into gear and I realised that I had finally seen my first Aardvark and needless to say, the excited expletives just started flowing! This is an absolutely incredible animal and, although primarily nocturnal, we managed to find it in broad daylight, even although it was slightly hidden in the long grass. This far outweighed any other sighting for me that we had on the entire weekend. The rest of the afternoon was pretty tame by comparison, but still produced some nice goodies.

Just as we lost the light in the late afternoon, we came across a group of Cheetahs which posed for us and really gave some great photographic opportunities apart from the lack of light

Once again after dark, we spent a few more hours driving around and managed to find a few interesting creatures.