Location:   Chelinda, Nyika National Park, Malawi
Date:    14 September 2009
Observer:  Georgina Gallagher and Denis Stack

Things at the newly reopened Chelinda Camp have been going fantastically as far as game viewing is concerned. The high plateau where we are situated is one of the most iconic and unique locations in Africa and is the only place in southern Africa where big game is still found in the Afro-montane biome. The view from the camp most days is replete with roan, eland, zebra, bushbuck and reedbuck and we are regularly visited overnight by spotted hyaena and other nocturnal denizens. The area has long been renowned for its leopard viewing and it is certainly a unique habitat in which to view this elusive big cat. Before our arrival we had always been a little sceptical however and wondered just how regular the sightings were.

Well, our scepticism has been well and truly quelled. On Saturday night on our way past the campsite a lovely adult male leopard walked across the road in front of us. We were thrilled and thought that we'd wait a while before the next sighting. Not so. On Sunday night guests in camp spent 15 minutes with a male and female leopard who playfully rolled around in the grass adjacent to the road before disappearing into the night. On Monday night, another guest (Tobias Larsson, the photographer credited here) went out on a short drive and had the unbelievable luck of seeing two leopards mating!

On my way down to the main area to meet guests for dinner I was thinking to myself that our run of luck was surely over when just before Chalet 1 I saw a tail (with a tell tale curl at the end) disappear up the slope.  I shone my torch from the roadway but did not see anything so went a little way up the slope and there he was lying in the grass about 8 feet away looking at me!  I backed off down the slope and started making my way to the dining room, all the time checking the road behind me for the male leopard I had just seen.  As I got closer the leopard joined the road and walked slowly behind me!  By the time I reached the main area and got the staff out to have a look the leopard was down by the little bridge where it lay for a while before strolling back up to the steps of Chalet 1 where it lay down again before disappearing into the bush!