Sunday October 19

Early wakeup call so we are ready to go on the game drive by 6 am. Some of us were a bit groggy, but put us on those open trucks and drive fast over the bumps, and we're awake. Today we saw jackal, lion cubs, cape buffalo, gnu, marabou stork, hippo, lion male (holey crap), and various antelope. What a great day. We finished with a supper under the stars, lit by kerosene lamps. Very nice.


Also saw a snake (boomslang?, boomslanger?) near the restaurant. Pretty cool-pretty venomous.....

Saturday October 18

Up early for an excellent breakfast, then checked out of the room and back on the bus. The weather today is rainy, misty and foggy, so the pictures will not be as good as what they have been.
We stopped at the Blyde River Canyon to have a look, the skies had cleared a bit for pictures. This is a pretty spot where the Blyde and Trure Rivers meet in a deep canyon. \i hope the pictures do it justice.
Another stop at the Three Rondavels (3 sisters mountain range) for more photos.

Off we go to Kapama River Lodge. Before we even got to the gate, we saw giraffe and Kudu through the fencing of the compound. This property is 15,000 hectares, and we only saw the fencing as we arrived and departed. Once you got inside, you forgot it was a privately stocked property. The animals are self-sustaining, ie: the lions and leopards feed themselves from whatever they catch. Occasionally the Lodge staff have to remove predators, but the prey animals control themselves. Their Cape Buffalo herd is quite valuable as they are TB free, which puts their value at I believe $100,000 each.
We saw tons of stuff today on our first game drive: warthog, elephant, leopard, giraffe, pangolin, and white rhino female and calf.






Nyala, Warthog, and one of our jeeps leaded with happy girls

The property here is beautiful, nice rooms, nice pool, good food. No roughing it here, except for the unwelcome bugs in our room. Yuck. I will ask for another room tomorrow as no-one else saw any bugs, and I hardly slept thinking about them.