Sighting of the Quarter: Unexpected Visitor at Tubu Hide

8/4/2010

The Jao Concession's Hunda Island is a wild and remote corner of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. While the area boasts extraordinary wildlife sightings, some are certainly more unexpected than others.

Tubu Tree Camp guide Kambango Sinimbo and his guests had planned to enjoy a peaceful late afternoon game-drive featuring a "sundowner" (cocktail) stop at Tubu Hide on Hunda Island. As Kambango pulled up to the hide showing his guests the famous bush loo with a view, while checking the adjoining floodplains for wildlife, he casually proposed, "Let's stretch our legs here and climb up into the hide with our sundowners." No sooner had he said this when one of his guests responded, "Is that a stuffed toy up there on the hide?" After some reversing of the Land Rover and excited yells of "Stop!" and cameras clicking, Kambango reversed a little more to reveal the "gate crasher" in all his glory - a resplendent male leopard stretched out on Tubu Hide.