A key ingredient in looking for animals and birds in southern Africa is patience.The old saying ‘everything comes to those who wait’ could never be truer and packing plenty of patience in your bags will help to make your time in southern Africa’s national parks and game reserves all the richer. The amazing encounter we had with the leopard in this photo would never have happened if we weren’t prepared to wait and see what might happen. You see, we were driving back to camp in Kruger National Park when we saw a few cars stopped on the road and thought – oooh they’ve seen something exciting. And they had – there in a tree about 100 metres from the road was a leopard. We got there and saw the leopard as it decided to climb out of the tree and disappear into the long grass at its base. The other cars all slowly moved off but we decided to stay just in case we could see the leopard again. We waited, slowly cruised up and down the road, waited some more and were about to finally give up when – there! Emerging out of the grass right by the side of our car was our leopard! She proceeded to walk along the side of the road and then cross the road right in front of us before disappearing again into the bush. What a magic encounter and we were so relieved we’d been patient enough and had waited!