Gate 1, South Africa - Day 7, Kruger National Park, evening

The Gate 1 programming ended with the afternoon game drive but 14 of us opted for another one and while the rest of the group went shopping or went back to the hotel, we were driven back to the original gate and got into two of the 9 passenger vehicles again.
This had been arranged with an independent company that had paid for the rights to drive in the evening on certain dirt roads in the park. It is not open to the public, to drive their own cars, in the evening to prevent car/animal collisions.
The driver/guide was terrible. We realized, quickly, how good the "rangers" arranged by Gate 1 had been. This guy was rude, apathetic, argumentative and just didn't seem to care whether we saw animals or not. He had no working radio so could not consult with others about their sightings and he sat and played on his phone whenever we stopped at animals (predominantly Impala herds) and had to be asked if we could please continue.

I even resorted to taking pictures of the scenery.

Sporadically we saw Kudu

and Impala

About half way into the 3 hour drive he must have realized he had really pissed us off because he said he was going to drive by some rocks where the "cats" sometimes like to hang out.

I was in the seat closest to the front and called out to him "Whats that up ahead"

She walked towards us, in the long grasses, as we strained to see her.

A Leopard. We were so excited and the driver told us we would need to be quiet.

She crossed the road behind us and then came back, parallel to us but on the opposite side of the road.

She totally ignored us as we drove very slowly, keeping pace with her.

We were about 30 to 40ft away from her.

Sometimes we would loose sight of her behind trees, bushes, grass

but keeping a steady pace, she always reappeared.

Not a very clear picture, but she went up on her hind legs scratching at this bush and then, lifting her tail, urinated on it to mark her territory. We were breathless, amazed at seeing this behaviour that we had only seen on nature TV shows.

It was near sunset, lighting her beautifully. The shadow this side of her is of our vehicle.

Then she stopped

suddenly alert.

She crouched, stalking.

Pictures now were harder to get as she was seeking cover, staying low,

totally focused on something ahead of her.

She chose her spot

by a dead tree, all we had was occasional glimpses of her spots now.

We were loosing light.

Then we saw what had caught her attention, a herd of Impala that we had passed earlier were grazing their way towards her hiding spot.

It was quite a large herd with many babies. The whispers in the vehicle got quite frantic as some of us were excited about the prospect of watching "a kill" and others of us really didn't want that to happen.

They grazed slowly towards where the leopard was waiting and when they were 10 to 15 feet away from her the lead adults suddenly were on alert and one made a strange, loud, honking, snorting noise.

The herd arranged itself with adults on alert at the front and babies at the back. The ones at the front actually moved towards the leopard and now all were making this loud noise that didn't sound like it should come from these creatures. Then everything happened so fast that, on checking with the others, our recollections are slightly different. But I think the leopard pounced, the Impala scattered....

the leopard targeted one and gave a short chase but then just walked away.

We were suddenly alone, no animals at all.
We had watched this play out for about 45 minutes. I gather Noah used his iphone and has a 29 minute video but that the end isn't clear, showing mostly the roof of the vehicle, right at the climax.

We drove back to the gate in the dusk. So excited at what we had seen. Our driver told us that Leopards, unlike Cheetah, don't run as fast as an Impala and rely on hiding and pouncing to catch them.

We met up with the other vehicle at the gate. They, unfortunately, had had an equally rude and ineffective driver but had not seen anything worthwhile. We were so lucky!