Our first game drive in the Kruger

The gates to leave Satara opened at 4:30am but as the sun didn’t come up until 5:30am we decided it was pointless leaving before that, so we got up at 4:45am had a couple of coffees and left at 5:30am after the rush.
We turned right out of the gate and then turned right again and headed down the Orpen to Satara road heading for Orpen rest camp 50km away.
All was quite for the first 20km and we hardly saw anything. Just the odd lone animal, then as we crested a small hill we saw a pack of wild dogs running down the road towards us. Then out of the bush on our side jumped a baby impala followed by more wild dogs. They were on the hunt. The impala ran diagonally across the road right in front of and into the bush on the other side of the road and the wild dogs pursued.
It all happed so fast we didn’t even get any pictures so I spun the car around and we followed there line of travel and a minute later we found the wild dogs down at the edge of the river.
It looked like the baby impala had made it across the river and the wild dogs weren’t prepared to follow which was good from our point of view. We sat there watching the dogs and as we turned to leave they all came up from the bank and started walking down the road right in front of us. Then they all stopped right next to the car. They were so close we could have touched them.
We moved on leaving the dogs to it and drove all the way to Orpen and on the way we saw 2 lots of Pygmy Mongoose which are really rare to see.
Once we were at Orpen camp we turned the car around and started to head back and 20km into the return journey I spotted a lone lioness walking through the long grass towards the road. We quickly stopped and as the lioness got to the edge of the road she looked up and down it checking for any moving vehicles. She gave us the eye but we had stopped moving and as she walked across the road 5 cubs followed her. We couldn’t believe our luck. They could only have been 2 weeks old and they all followed in a line squeaking and meewing. It was a great sight and we felt very privaliged.
We got back to camp at 10:30am and had breakfast and then went over to the reception area to use their wifi to book our next campsite on 2 days and our next excursion. Then we had ice creams as it was already 30°c and only just gone midday.
Back at camp we decided we couldn’t have a rest in this heat so we went swimming for 90 minutes. The pool was like bath water and between 2pm and 5pm, the hottest part of the day here it was 36°. We are so fortunate to have the wrap around awning.
As we were eating dinner at 6pm we were joined by a giant monitor lizard scratching around under the tree next to us for food.
After dinner we even had to go and get some ice to put in the fridge because it couldn’t cope with the heat.
Just after 7pm we headed over to the fence line and sat on the benches to wait for the hyena to come around. By 8:30pm when they hadn’t arrived we gave up waiting but all the time we were there we could hear a huge make lion roaring in the near distance.Read more