Day Five
We were awake before the alarm anxiously waiting for our next
game drive.
Today we saw White Rhino, White-back vultures, Baboons, Giraffe,
Wildebeest and Cheetahs. It was a cooler
day, misting on us most of the morning.
We put on the ponchos they provided us with to stay warm and as dry as
possible. One of the other groups were able to see lion, so hopefully
this evening we will be lucky to see that too.
We spent a leisure day at the Lodge, well actually catching
up on our blog and getting the pictures downloaded and inserted.
Tonight, we did our normal game drive, plus stopped at two
lodges to check-out their facilities.
On our game drive tonight we saw Water Buck (he has a white
ring on his rear, the tracker calls it their “follow me sign”), 5 White
Rhinoceros, Go Away Bird and Giraffes.
We stopped and took a break along the trail and were served snacks,
wine, beer, etc and talked about our sightings and what was yet to come. Unfortunately, we were cut just a little
short due to the onset of heavy rain.
Day Six
Our usual wake call at 500AM, into our land cruisers by
520AM, no time to dilly dally around.
Today, our tracker and guides mission was to find the lions. Another group at the lodge had seen them the
night before, so we really wanted to spot them too. We spent the better part of the morning drive
searching and tracking them; finally, they were located and we did quite a bit
of off-roading and trampling trees to follow a lioness and her cubs. We were successful! We then headed back to the lodge for breakfast
and to pack for our move to the next lodge.
We stopped at Kapama Lodge & Reserve so that we could
check-out their facilities.
They are located directly across from the Hoedspruit Airport
and their guests are picked up in the Land Rovers. They have a beautiful facility and they are
rated as a 5 star property.
We then had an hour transfer to Karongwe Riverside Lodge
located in the Karongwe Reserve. We
arrived there at 230PM and immediately had lunch, followed by our evening game
drive starting at 4PM. Our
accommodations were roomy cabins with a porch overlooking the water hole.
Our new ranger is
Betuel and his tracker is Raymond.
Betuel is very knowledgeable
about the various species that we saw and shared great
tidbits along the way. We saw: Bush
Buck, Nile crocodile, Yellow-Billed Stork, Guinea Fowl, Giraffe, Nyala, White
Rhinoceros, Cheetah and the LION!
OMG! The Lion viewing is amazing…… At first, he wouldn’t
look at us, then he yawned and the ranger said, he’ll yawn 3 times and that
means he’ll move.
And he did! He yawned
exactly 3 times and got up and slowly walked by us and moved to another
location. We were able to get some
great pictures!
Back to the Lodge for dinner, shower, sleep and back on the
trail tomorrow with a wake call of 5AM once again……
Day Seven
It is 5AM once
again, out to the Land Rovers to see what animals we could locate today.
Kudo, Jackal,
Baboons, Monkeys, Giraffe, Elephant and the Hippopotamus.
On our way back to the lodge, we stopped to visit the
neighboring tented camp (Chisimo). The
camp had just been totally re-done 2 months ago and really was a wonderful
place to stay.
After breakfast, we headed out for our 6 hour bus ride back
to Johannesburg, with a stop for lunch in Dullstroom. Dullstroom and the surrounding area reminded
us all of Napa Valley. The landscape was
hilly and the town was very quaint with cute little restaurants and shops to
explore.
We are spending our night at the City Lodge located right at
the Johannesburg Airport and tomorrow we will fly off to Kasane Airport and
travel to Victoria Falls.
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