I think it’s something that a hundred men or more could never do.
Though maybe the place we’re staying might like us to leave at some point and being evicted into the African bush might be fun, initially, but it gets a little cold and we also might get eaten by like fifty different things.
We’ve been staying in some amazing places, at the Savannah camp and the Leopard Hills camp, both in the Sabi Sands reserve. It’s been amazing.
Basic routine is up at 5.30 for a dawn/morning game drive, followed by ‘breakfast’ at 10ish and then ‘lunch’ at 2 and an afternoon/early night gamedrive from 3.30 through to about 7.
In the middle you can do a few things – lie around on sunbeds or swim in the plunge pools watching Elephants eat all the bushes 5 feet away (happened to us the first day) or go out on a walking tour. Those on Facebook may have seen that I went out 1 on 1 with the Ranger (Dangerous Dave!) to track down an old male lion we saw in the morning… Actually, it’s this guy:
We didn’t quite find him but it was the looking that made it all exciting. Because it’s really cool here – the animals and birds let you get within feet of you when you’re in the vehicles. Or closer. We had a leopardess walk right at, then under us one afternoon. But on foot it’s different – the cars? Not a threat. But people? Definitely a threat.
Anyway, we’ve seen some crazy things. Every few minutes it’s something new. And it’s the same animals, usually. So over the 5 days we’ve been here we’ve started to learn stories. Family, backgrounds, heirarchy, territory…
A quick list includes:
- A leopardess coming back to find her cubs and only finding one, then bringing him to a kill. For a couple days we have been finding her and the rangers have speculated the other cub is dead (the circle of life!) but yesterday afternoon out of nowhere we came onto the second cub, hidden in some trees waiting for his mum to come home. So she’s been hiding them in different areas – probably because they’re getting too old and are fighting each other!
- An EXTREMELY rare African Wild Dog experience. The third most endagered animal in Africa is the Wild Dog and a small pack has moved into a den here to try and litter pups. For days we’ve seen these amazing creatures hunting and cruising the den site, and we’ve been waiting to see pups. There were 2 sites at one time in fact, the second an insurance site for a younger non-alpha female, and we ALMOST saw those pups as we heard them coming up to the entrance… but the next day, the Alpha female at the other den site went over and KILLED all the pups of the other female! The pack couldn’t keep both sites alive so the insurance pups were killed. (The circle of life!)
- Within an hour of being on the ground as we lounged in a pool out the back, a herd of elephants came into our backyard.
- Leopards in trees, leopards eating everything, leopards hunting… Leopards everywhere. Every single one of them beautiful.
- Male lions roaring, lionessess roaring, lion cubs feeding…
- Hippos, viewed from the car (cool!) and on foot (Skye almost died when it roared at us from the pond a dozen metres away)…
- Everything else I have forgotten.
It’s amazing. We leave tomorrow for Dubai but honestly… we need to come back.
Here’s one more photo:
Tomorrow – one more game drive, one more walk with Dangerous Dave and then on a flight to Dubai.
