I got up at around 6 o’clock. The cab was supposed to pick me up at 6:30 but she got lost finding the house. I got in the cab at about 6:45 and thought to myself, “Well this is a bad start.” Fortunately that turned out to be the worst of my traveling issues. I was waiting at the terminal with over and hour to spare and no body sat next to me on the plane. My bag was the first one off the carousel (which never happens) and the driver who was supposed to pick me up was standing right in front of me after I walked through the door to exit baggage claim.
The landscape of Nelpruitt and the other towns that lead to Kruger National Park surprised me. I was expecting flat grasslands and few trees. Instead, there were miles of lush farm land. Banana, fig and avocado trees covered the hilly countryside. This scenery continued for about and hour before we turned off the highway and onto a dirt road. After 20 minutes of bouncing up and down (the drivers van was clearly not built to go on this road) the scenery started to change. The land became more flat and open grasslands began to dominate the vegetation.
The drive took about 2 hours and I arrived at Sabi Sabi Bush Lodge at around 2:30. After checking in, I was immediately escorted to the dining room where a feast awaited me for lunch. It was buffet style. I went for the yellow tail steak, chicken tortilla rap and salad. Everything was tasty and it was great change from my usually lunch (a PBJ, a cereal bar and a banana). I went to my room, which turns out to be the closest room to the lodge. This is actually important because at night you are escorted to your room by the ranger because of nocturnal predators. However, I don’t have to be escorted because I’m just 20 yards away.
My room is awesome. (Instead of writing two paragraphs about how awesome it is, I’ll let you just look at the pictures.)
I had no time to relax there though, as “afternoon tea” was at 3:30 sharp. I was late by about 15 minutes and my ranger wanted to get the safari going a little early (it usually starts at 4 and so I had to rush to the Jeep without getting anything at the tea session.
Ben, my ranger, was a 33 year old from the UK and Jack, our jeeps tracker, was in his mid-forties and from one of the local tribes (I think Shangaan). The Jeep sits 9 passengers but Ben was only in charge of me and an Indian family of 4 so there was plenty of room. I sat on the back of the jeep to get the best view (look at the picture).
Unfortunately the weather was far from ideal. There was almost complete cloud cover and it drizzled on and off during the whole day.
Despite this, we were off and running. The roads are primarily surrounded by high vegetation and it is difficult to see through the bush, however, as we approached the first open area of our safari we came across wildebeest, impala, and buffalo – not bad for the first ten minutes. After another 10 to 15 minutes of driving, Ben overheard on the radio that there was a leopard spotted about 30 meters from the road. As we approached, we saw the jeep that had spotted the leopard and another just behind it. The leopard was still about 30 meters away and it was difficult to see as it was lying down in the tall grass. Suddenly it rose up and walked to the road. It walked on the road for a good 20 minutes marking its territory and doing other leopard things. We were just a few meters away following it every step of the way. It’s really an amazing and beautiful animal. It is also the hardest to find of the Big 5.
After the Leopard ran into the bush, Ben got word that wild dogs were spotted just a few kilometers away from where we were. Ben was probably the most excited of all of us because he hadn’t seen wild dogs in sabi sabi for about 6 months. On the way to the dogs we say a Nyala, a fairly rare cousin to the impala.
Jack followed the dog tracks until he saw that they had run into a thick patch of bush. We circled around looking for them for about a half hour but had no such luck. We did bump into a few wildebeest and saw our first rhino, but Ben assured us that the dogs should be our target.
After abandoning the dogs it was pretty dark and so we brought out the high powered flashlights to look for nocturnal animals. Most of the big game is asleep at night and unless you get lucky Ben told us that the night drives can be relatively uneventful. Jack found some chameleons and we got to see some massive spiders because their webs reflect the headlights but the last half hour we pretty much just trekked back to the lodge.
We arrived later than the other jeeps and we had 20 minutes before dinner. I was both exhilarated and exhausted. I gave a little consideration to just passing out then but I went to dinner.
There was a table set up for Ben, the family and me. Apparently, the family lived in Trumbell Connecticut for a few years and the wife did research at Yale (small world much?). The whole family is vegetarian so they didn’t have that many options but, to me, the food was varied and excellent. It was buffet style again and I had Kudu steak, and yellow tail along with some different kinds of salads.
After dinner, the kids, ages about 9 and 13 had collapsed at the table. They had arrived the same day as I had and they flew from Dubai (and I thought I had a long day). When the family left, I had dessert with Ben and we actually got into some pretty in depth stuff interesting about the taxonomy and behavior of some of the big game.
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