Mike just emailed in photos of two beautiful close-up sightings yesterday.

He spotted the elephants near the Moditlo River, very close to the Vuyani Safari Lodge. It happens several times a year that the elephants walk past the lodge, and we even saw them once drinking from the swimming pool. But it is easy to spot wildlife from the lodge: we get daily visits from warthogs, nyala, impala, and very regularly a giraffe (or several). One of the most amazing near-lodge events was a cheetah kill yards away from the honeymoon suite. It was an unlucky day for an impala, that day.

Even lions have been observed from the lodge, sleeping as close as 15 meters away from the swimming pool. This is rare, but when it happens, it is almost surreal.

We see giraffes on our game drives almost every day. We have close to 1000 giraffes on our huge reserve, which is astonishing. About 180,000 giraffes are estimated to live in free nature in Africa, so every 1 out of 180 African giraffes live on our reserve. Scary statistic, considering that Africa, as a continent, is larger than North America, Latin America and Europe combined!

It shows the massively positive impact this reserve we call home is to African wildlife conservation.