South Africa: Day 3

We got woken up at 5 am, 15 minutes to get ready and get to the meeting point, at 5:15/5:30 am. The sun had already started raising so we jumped on the truck to leave.

Lioness enjoying her meal

As soon as we left the proximity of the lodges we encountered zebras, two different kinds together (or that’s what Hamilton said)  one with just black and white stripes and one with black and white stripes but with some brown stripes on the white ones. We found some giraffes; one which was having trouble while drinking as his front legs appear to be very unstable, then we found the same lion group as yesterday, but this time, they were having breakfast, Lucky told us how they probably captured the Kudu during the early hours, and they were now enjoying the feast that they deserved. 

We stopped for some coffee not much after that,

 and as we continued, we found a single but massive elephant, taking a mud shower, quite something to watch. Shortly after that we encountered a group of Rhinos. That’s  4/5!!!

We got back to the lodge at around 9 and breakfast was waiting for us, a variety of fruit and eggs prepared however we wanted. Sofie then thought that it would be a great idea to try something like syrup marmalade, in the process of trying it she succeeds in spilling it all over the table, who would have guessed?

After breakfast we got ready to leave in direction of the next lodges, in the Sabi sands park. A 4 hour trip awaited us, with an hour of gravel road, awesome!

We got to the lodges without to many issues this time, as we followed the main road until we found the sign, and got greeted by 2 rangers, Maurice and Bradley; the last would be our ranger and driver for the upcoming days. We got a tour around the lodges and saw our own, the lodge I was going to share with my sisters was huge, and the shower was outside, with a wonderful view of the stars.

After the tour we grabbed a cup of coffee and got ready for the evening game:

Young female elephant

Just as we left we found elephants, a whole group of female elephants which we spent half an hour with, they got very close to the vehicle and we got a lot of information about them by Bradley. We continued with more impalas, apparently there are so much of these because everything eats impala; lions, leopards, even eagles!

During the sunset we had a drink with some snacks on the front of the car, gin and tonic as a drink and chips, nuts and ; which is dried and spiced meat, a local snack. We had a little chat with our game partners, as they were Dutch, with almost the same trip planned as us, just a lot more compact, with stays of just 1 night and more km between every lodge. We continued with a short night safari where Bradley spotted a chameleon, from the car, I still wonder how he did it.

Back at the lodges there was a camp fire waiting for us with the dinner buffet, a choice between lamb pie or beef bolognese lasagne, being a buffet I obviously had to try them both, and I have to say, the pie was lovely.