[imagesource:here]

The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park is one of southern Africa’s most popular parks, a favourite of those who can’t stand the crowds and cars that blight the Kruger experience.

Seriously, make the mistake of going to the park during the school holidays and you’ll feel just a little sick to your stomach.

The three Kgalagadi camps within South Africa’s borders are pretty well organised, stocked with all the essentials and a pool for a midday cool-off, but when you head to the smaller camps on the Botswana side things are a little different.

It’s the Matopi 1 camp that features in this story, which took place on January 4 and appeared on Safarious. We’ll set the scene:

…my wife, myself and another two friends set up camp at Matopi 1 on the way to the South African side of the park. We were in two vehicles, ourselves in a ground tent the other vehicle a rooftop tent.

…I went for a leak a little way from my vehicle and spotted a leopard lying in the road about 50m from camp. I called the others to come and have a look and we stood at my vehicle observing him. He paid us no attention and got up and started moving to our camp…

He moved around the camp lying down next to each vehicle, sniffing our chairs, completely relaxed and paying us no mind…

At about 11pm we wanted to go to bed and I got in my vehicle and started it in the hope that he would take the hint and depart, but he was completely unfazed and we guessed that he was habituated to humans which was saddening.

Unfazed isn’t even the half of it, because things quickly took a turn for the worse:

At just after 12 midnight, I woke up to my wife screaming in terror with the leopard tearing into her leg trying to drag her out of the tent. I dived to the bottom of the tent and tried to find his eyes to get my fingers into him. At this point he let go and ran off.

I located my torch to assess the damage to her leg, which was horrific. My wife started screaming that the leopard was back and I turned to find him stalking towards us about 10m away. I rushed out of the tent, grabbed a spade and charged him screaming as loudly as I could, and he ran off with me in pursuit for about 100m.

By this stage my wife had managed to get herself to the vehicle which was about 5m from our tent.

[source:safarious]