Summer has arrived at Xigera and it is quite beautiful. We have had enough rain for the floodplains and islands to have a lush green coat. The air is clean and fresh and the summer skies dramatic, I love this time of the year.

storm brewing in the Okavango Delta

Yesterday morning, as I do every morning, I met with Lesh after he had cleared the Lodge area for the construction workers and we set off to see what the day would bring. We went up to the north of the lodge, as the sky in the south was dark with cloud and the promise of rain, and the weather looked a lot friendlier where we were going. We alternated between driving and stopping to listen, as we made our way east onto the floodplains and heard the distant roar of a lion. We had seen two young nomadic males the evening before and assumed this was them heading towards Chiefs Island, hunting as they went.

We were looking for sign of our wonderful lone lioness, which Lesh had been lucky enough to see a week or so before. She is called Sisilia and around late March last year, she had five cubs close to the Xigera airstrip. I last saw her in September when she was frantically searching for her cubs, after she had been out hunting; we didn't see her reunited with them. Raising cubs as a lone lioness without a pride is not easy and I was hoping they were safe somewhere.