Today is our last full day at Mala Mala. It’s been a great safari experience here. We’ve seen plenty of Leopards, which is what Mala Mala is known for. In addition, we saw a great variety of other animals. Today was no different – we saw lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, zebras and more. A great way to end our stay at the Mala Mala Rattray’s!

To kick off our afternoon, we saw some elephants along the river. The youngster was rolling around in the mud while the two adults were eating.

Presumably, this other elephant was the mother, as the youngster got up to follow her when she moved on.

We needed to cross the river but stopped because we saw a saddle-billed stork across in the grasses.

They are such beautiful birds! He walked around for a bit, then started grooming himself.

It was time to cross the river. It was only maybe 8″ or so deep in the middle part of the river.

We had to cross some sand, too. Then it was up and out of the riverbed.

Not far away, there were a couple of giraffes. They stopped browsing to take a look at us.

In the bush we saw a shy male bushbuck.

We came down to the riverbed again and saw numerous paw prints in the sand. It’s a mix of adult lion prints and either lion cubs or leopard prints with hyena tracks over the top of them.

We wondered about them, then up on the bank and in the brush, we found the source of most of the prints – lion cubs! They were just hanging out taking a nap. There were 7 cubs.

One by one, they woke up, peered around the corner, then disappeared as they walked off that way.

Soon, we were down to only two cubs…

Finally, the last two cubs decided it was time to follow their siblings. They disappeared around the corner, so Jacques moved the truck so we could see what was going on. Surprise! All seven of the cubs were there with two moms.

What a great find! As you can imagine, we stayed to watch them for a while.

This one was trying to squeeze in to nurse…

So cute how this little one was playing with Mom’s tail.

I love this photo with the cubs lined up in front of Mom. There is a third cub squeezed in between the other two. You can just see his leg sticking out.

And this is a portrait of two. You can just imagine how the cub will grow up one day.

Finally, it was time to leave the lions. Hard to do, but we wanted to see what else we could find on our last day at Mala Mala. We found this lone bull elephant wandering around. He was BIG with huge tusks.

It was funny that he ended up with his trunk hanging over one of his tusks. He just walked off like that, no worries.

We saw this blob out in the grass and couldn’t figure out what it was at first. Can you?

Well, I did crop the photo so you have a closer look compared to us being far away in the truck. Still, it was difficult to tell that this was a hyena. It was lying hunched over with its head flat out in front of it.

We saw another small group of giraffes.

By now, the sun was starting to set. Shadows were getting longer and the color of light was changing to get more golden.

We saw a small herd of zebras walking through the grass. One by one they passed by our truck.

A young zebra came running out of the brush to catch up with the adults.

As you can see, it’s starting to get later …

Luckily, we were still out and about, because we got to see this male leopard. He was just arriving at this tree and proceeded to settle down on a branch.

He looked rather relaxed…

But then he started looking around more. By now, it was getting dark for photography, so Jacques used the spotlight so we could continue to take photos.

After looking around a bit and getting more unsettled, he decided to leave the tree. This is a classic leopard pose you see in nature photos.

We followed him as he sniffed his way through the grasses. Jacques did a great job of keeping the light on him so these photos came out fairly well – especially considering they are set to a very high ISO.

Finally, we found out what the male leopard had been looking for – a female! He was a bit snarly and she just rolled around submissively. This is a grainy photo, but I wanted you to see it.

He kind of kept his distance from her, but she was very interested in him. She kept going up to him and rolling around on the ground. Finally, they walked off into the brush. Here, you can see the big size difference between the male and female leopard.

As you can see from that last photo, it was pretty dark by then. So, we decided to head back for dinner. Always a good thing at Rattray’s!

I had duck for dinner …

Jeff had an Asian pad thai type of dish…

We had soufflés for dessert. Yum!

Whelp, it’s time to go back to our room and pack up for our flight out of here tomorrow morning. We will be sad to leave Rattray’s. It is a very nice lodge and the game reserve had an amazing variety of animals.