“They were flying up along the river bed towards us. As soon as they were all gone, and as I was about the start the vehicle, I heard monkeys alarm calling on the other side of the river bed, very far from us,” Van der Merwe wrote on his Facebook page, Quintessential Wildlife Photographic Safaris.
“I told my client we need to wait it out and see what it is, it could be a leopard they are alarm calling for, and this could potentially be our first leopard of the safari.” The monkeys’ alarm called for about thirty minutes, and then about 300 meters upstream two leopards appeared, walking in the vehicle’s direction.
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“We lost visual soon after as they went up the riverbank, but the monkeys never stopped alarm calling. We waited another thirty minutes or so and eventually one of the two leopards come down the riverbank into the river and started walking towards us, from 300m away. “This sighting developed from seeing a leopard 300m away to having it literally next to our vehicle.
It was an absolutely incredible moment for us, and the way we worked for it, through patience and persistence. We ended up spending two hours and 45 minutes in total at this location, and one hour 45 minutes of viewing the leopard, with only two other cars eventually joining our sighting,” Van der Merwe wrote. Go to the Quintessential Wildlife Photographic Safaris Facebook page for more information.
