On Safari With Karen: 10 February 2015

10 February 2015

As a new tour started today, our first highlight was the first animal we saw: an elephant bull eating marulas. We were barely 5 minutes in the park and there he was standing as if waiting for us. The first animal you see is always exciting, that it was this magnificent bull made it even better.

Our second highlight was at Nyamundwa Dam. While we were watching three hippos climbed on the shores to start grazing. All the while a baby hippo was playing pretending to be a dolphin in the shallow waters next to its mum. A great sighting.

We also saw a fish eagle, a buffalo mud wallowing, our first herd of impalas, Egyptian geese, a rare saddle-billed stork, a grey heron and white-breasted cormorants here.

Other interesting sightings: herd of buffalos, zebras, blue wildebeest, magnificent kudu bulls, kudu females, a steenbok, a warthog, Dideric's cuckoo and more elephants.

On Safari With Robbie from 7 February 2015

7 February 2015

We arrived in Kruger at 3pm and traveled around the Pretoriuskop area before heading to camp. We spotted numerous herds of elephant, a lone buffalo bull, kudu, impala, baboons, vervet monkeys and lots of giraffe!

8 February 2015

This mornings drive brought an abundance of Zebra, elephant and buffalo sightings as well as a bataleur eagle taking a dwarf mongoose off the road in front of us!

The afternoon drive started out with relatively good visuals of Giraffe , Elephant and then a classic herd of Buffalo moving at a pace, swiftly across the road and then disappearing almost with out visual into thick bush!

Later on we came across 2 distant but beautiful male Lions, which were intermittently dozing in a tiny amount of shade at 3pm in the day!

Approaching sundown our best sighting of the trip occurred when I spotted a male Leopard crossing the road! Thinking it had disappeared we were surprised to see that once it had crossed the road it had decided to lie down and clean its paws 1m off the road! It was truly a majestic male which suddenly became mobile next to us for about a km and then lay down again ! It was a fantastic sighting!

To end off the day we got a super white Rhino that completed our big 5 sightings.

9 February 2015

Todays extreme conditions made it difficult for us however we did manage to spot elephant, buffalo and white rhino.

We saw 33 new bird species and watched a dung beetle roll dung for over 20 minutes! The smaller sightings enthused my guests which was awesome! We exit camp early tomorrow!

10 February 2015

On this morning I couldn’t have asked for better. We found the 2 mammals we were looking for. Namely Cheetah and Hyena! The Cheetah was out of this world as we followed them on the hunt for 2km ! Initially there were only 2 but they called the other one! It was an amazing  moment seeing the called Cheetah coming down the road towards us and then greeting his brothers in a happy frenzy! We watched these 3 spectacular cats for 1 hour ... Playing , grooming and then taking a rest on a termite mound!

On safari With Karen: 9 February 2015

9 February 2015

Today was already the last day of this tour. We started off with a really quiet morning and were happy with sightings of red-collared widowbird, lilac-breasted roller, European roller, magpie shrike, guineafowls and plenty of other birds to keep us interested in nature. Especially since the guests were really into the birds, it was a good drive even with the mammals being scarce.

After our quick break we definitely had a highlight of a massive group of impalas, wildebeest and zebras as well as a lone kori bustard walking by at the same time.

The favorite animal of one of my guests was a zebra, so he had the time of his life when two babies in the group were drinking from the mother. It was also a great sighting to see them together as well as seeing wildebeest since that was a new mammal for us.

Other interesting sightings: elephants, white rhino, herd of buffalo, giraffe, plenty more zebras, steenbok, kudus, common grey duikers, Schmeichel's blind snake, and another new animal: tree squirrels eating the marula nuts from elephant dung.

On Safari With Karen: 8 February 2015

8 February 2015

This morning the guests went on a bushwalk and even though it rained during their walk, it was thoroughly enjoyed. Amongst all other stuff they encountered a group of daggaboys. They actually stumbled upon them and were so close they had to back up. However, the buffalos seemed interested they kept following them when they retreated so in the end they decided on leaving them entirely, but the back-up walked behind them looking over his shoulder a couple of times just in case.

In the afternoon it had cleared up. We went on a short game drive and just at the end we were surprised by two white rhinos calmly walking in the middle of the road. We followed them at their pace a short distance away until they stopped to graze. We pulled up alongside them, and they didn't mind us at all. We stayed with them until one of them got restless and we gave them back their peace and quiet.

Other interesting sightings: waterbuck, lilac-breasted rollers, white-fronted bee eater, sleeping lion, grass snake, plenty elephants, woodlands kingfisher, baboons (still known as bunny-killers, we can't seem to get by that), brown snake eagle, red-billed hornbill, hippos, impalas and zebras.