Our hearts were heavy as we bounced along the rutted sand tracks away from our camp in the Kgalagadi. The rains had completely transformed the park from the red dunes we’d loved so much in December to walls of tall grass on either side of the road, a tunnel which we trundled through. The last 8 or 9 days we’d caught glimpses of lion paws, a mane, a shoulder and far off in the distance, a cheetah and her two nearly-adult cubs, playing hide and seek in the thick vegetation, but not much else.