Our First Game Drive

We had a really rough nights sleep. South Africa does load shedding and cuts power to distribute to elsewhere and last night our power went off at 9pm. It has gone off almost every night and we hadn’t noticed because the house we are staying in has an inverter. This is a system that when the power is on it charges a battery so when the power goes off you still have battery power.
This has worked for us and run our air conditioning all night since we got here but because the pool guy came and turned the pool pump on for hours in the morning and then left the pump running all afternoon this used copious amount of energy. Also the cleaner had the hoover and a washing machine running so during the day the battery didn’t charge.
So at 9pm when the power went out our battery only lasted 10 minutes and then we were without air conditioning and I hadn’t had it running before bedtime.
Our room gradually got hotter and hotter. It was still 28°c outside which felt cooler than inside when we both got up at 1am unable to stay asleep.
I jumped straight in the pool and went back to bed wet with a fan running of a power bank and Ellie spent ages on the sofa.
We hardly got a wink of sleep and at 5am we were both up getting ready for our first game drive. We couldn’t wait to get in the car because we could put air con on.
Just after 6am we arrived at Lionspruit game reserve. This is a private game reserve owned by Marloth park and is only open to owners or guests at Marloth Park. It has loads of animals including 4 of the big five. The only thing it is missing is elephants.
We paid our 130 rand for entry which is about £5 and then set off and almost straight away a Giraffe crossed the road right infront of us.
Our first stop was 15mins in, at the impala hide where there was a lovely wooden hide overlooking a large watering hole. Here there were hundreds of impala and even a giraffe.
After a 20 minute stop we moved on and drove around 5km to another hide overlooking another watering hole. This water source had 7 giraffe, more impala and a few bushbuck. We even got to see one of the giraffes drinking.
We spent another 20 at this hide before moving to the next where it was pretty empty.
Along the game drive we saw thousands of impala and hundreds of Kudu. We even saw baby Kudu which is the cutest thing ever, we also saw Wilderbeast, Waterbok, Steenbok and lots of mousebirds but no predators and no rhino.
We left the park at 11am as the sun was now in full swing and it was atleast 35°c outside and we headed back to the house for a late breakfast and a rest.
Early in the afternoon we headed out for petrol and a few bits to keep us going for the next few days and then we started packing our stuff ready to leave. Once all that was done I jumped back in the pool to cool off while Ellie managed to feed a little bushbuck by hand. They are very mild mannered antelope.
At 5pm we headed back out to one of the lookout spots called two trees in Marloth Park overlooking the Kruger.
Almost as soon as we got out of the car we saw a cluster of people with binoculars pointing across the otherside of the river. We knew it would be a predator, the question is what one.
We headed down to the group and they pointed us towards a rock on the otherside of the river and above that rock was our first leopard. He was probably about 150 meters away and we could barely see him with the naked eye but luckily I had my big lens on the camera and I managed a few shots. Not the best but a sighting is a sighting.
We carried on walking trying to spot the female leopard to no avail but we did spot hundreds of waterbok down at the river and up at our side of the fence. There was also buffalo on the otherside and one got dangerously close to the leopard and we thought we were going to see the leopard attempt to take it down but in the end he just strolled off the other way. During the walk we met a young South African guy who now lives in Braintree of all places. We couldn’t believe it.
We left 2 trees just after sunset and drove back home in the dark and when we pulled up to the house about a hundred banded mongoose ran across the front of the drive. One had to go back for one of its babies and it was so small she was carrying it. Quite often it’s the smaller animals here that really make you love the place.
Back at home it was now 7pm and 30°c inside and outside.
Ellie started dinner while I went and put the air con on and then we sat in the garden with a little bushbuck eating our dinner and slowly melting.
Hopefully we’ll have a better nights sleep tonight as this is our last night here and tomorrow will be our first real dangerous game drive on our own. We’ll be up at 5am and heading into the Kruger.Read more