Today we started off with some Nyala and Impala in the riverbed. But our guides and the MRL guides were on a mission to find the lions. We had not seen them in 2 days, and that is unusually long. Aurela at MRL picked up fresh tracks and radioed us – we set off determined and it paid off! We found the male and the two young females on the Moria cutline. They were on the move so we followed them for about 30 minutes or so. Our guests were very excited, this is what they have traveled half the world around to see … the male stopped at one point to roll around in some fresh elephant dung. Charming. 😉 Eventually they disappeared into the thickets. Great sighting!

On our return to the lodge we saw the Elephant bull in an area we call the “Cotton Fields” – he was by himself and in a foul mood. We watched him for a bit before he gave us a shake of the head and disappeared into the shrubbery.

Uyai has been given a new camera, and the advantage is obvious: it makes much better quality photos. I am looking forward to posting better material on this blog going forward!

Here some beautiful photos we took today of the lion sighting today:

It is a shame that many of our employees, despite spending so much time at a lodge right in the middle of the African bush, see relativley little of the abundance of wildlife that surrounds them. Certainly a lot less than our guests, that’s for sure.

That makes it all the nicer when some large animals do come close to the lodge and visit. That is always a unique opportunity for our guys to marvel at some of these majestic animals that they live within … no, not even we are blasé when some of these unique animals walk closely past the Vuyani Safari Lodge!

Yesterday was one of those days. The elephant herd walked past the lodge, very closely. The entire staff was standing on the dirt road and watched them walk past. What pure joy for them to also see them from so close!

We sport, of course, the very awesome Toyota Landcruiser as our main workhorse to go out on safari. It’s been a very reliable, and entertaining, vehicle for years now.

These vehicles are so strong and sturdy, you can use them not for years but for decades (proper maintenance assumed of course).

We decided to add a second workhorse to our arsenal, and here it is: a LandRover Tdi.

This is THE classic safari game driver, par excellence! You will probably recognise this vehicle from many memorable safari movies, such as “Out of Africa”, to even the recent Adam Sandler flick “Blended”. OK, that film was maybe a bit crummy, but the vehicles in it were very nice. 😉

So, this one is a MEGA-version of a Landrover. Instead of the usual 10 seats it has 12 seats, offering even more space for guests. It is a 90’s model, and it has been 100% refitted and rebuilt, it looks just the way it did when it exited the factory. Everyone’s very excited here about the most recent addition to our vehicle park, by means of this classic English vehicle. I test-drove it with Petrus and Craig, and it was a real joy. I think our guests will really enjoy it too!

So here some photos I took a few days ago, as we were all marvelling at this thing’s beauty:

… it’s also about the hundreds of little things: flowers, birds, trees, smells, tastes, sounds, and then of course some of the world’s most stunning sunsets!

Very often, and this is a little sad, African safaris are reduced to the giraffe, the zebra, the lions, the elephants, … and while of course any African safari is also about these animals, the truth is, and I can guarantee you this, you will fall in love with the many hundreds of other things you will see here.

Here some photos taken over the last 2 days, to give you an idea of the many other things once can find and see here:

 

But yes, of course a safari here, as well as anywhere, is ALSO about the famous large game:

There are rumours that there are two breeding cheetah mothers on our reserve at the moment. One was seen a few days ago, with two cubs, and we keep seeing one with 5 cubs. We saw her again yesterday! We spotted her with 4 cubs, as you can see on the photos, so I am wondering where the 5th one is. Has she lost it? Or was it hiding away? It would be tragic if she has lost one, but very normal in nature. Survival rates of cheetah cubs are ultra-low (death rate varies from 50-75%). The fact that she has gotten so many cubs to this stage is already a statistical miracle. She is doing so well, and what amazing news for the conservation efforts here on this conservancy! Cheetahs are chronically hard to introduce to a conservancy, and to get them to reproduce. I suspect that some cheetahs on our reserve either came in on their own, or they were already there before. There were tracks of cheetahs already here many years ago, but we never saw any.

The two brothers we often see with guests were born on the reserve, and they are very relaxed when we see them on safari. It is obvious that this mother is already passing on this behavior to her offspring, so that will make for even more amazing cheetah sightings going forward. I couldn’t be more excited about this development, it just shows how much private game reserves such as ours can do to move the needle in a significant manner when it comes to ensuring the long-term survival of these rare cats. Only 550-800 specimen are estimated to still live in the wild in South Africa, so to have two cheetahs breeding successfully at the same time, in the wild, on their own, that’s just truly thrilling news.

We were tracking cheetahs yesterday, and saw some beautiful giraffes on our route. See below …

After a lengthy search we eventually found the two Cheetahs on the Khaya Ndlovu Cutline. They were posing beautifully and we got some absolutely fantastic shots. We stayed with them for around 20 to 30 minutes just watching them. It was an amazing sighting and our guests were very happy.

Cheetahs are not known to be good climbers. Stocky cats such as leopards, with short legs, are excellent climbers, but cheetahs, with their very long legs, they find it hard. All the more exciting to see this one attempting, and succeeding at it, after all. What unique photos. Nice.

We’ve been having some excellent few days on safari as of late, with rhino, elephant, cheetah sightings, and of course dozens of others.  So I am finding it hard to pick a particular animal we’ve seen over the last couple of days, it’s just too many. One thing that I always find irresistible is elephant babies, somehow. Not that they are all that small, but they look so tiny and cute next to their big parents, they just look adorable.

So, yesterday, we picked up tracks on the elephants and followed them all the way into the Muruti wilderness area– they were a bit shy and the bull was playing a hide and seek game with us (but chose a smallish tree 😉 ). We stayed with them for about 10 minutes before they disappeared – only to be tracked again and found on Moditlo – near the Moriah cutline, they sure travel a lot and fast!! And there he was, the little one, just a few weeks old. I had reported on him a little while ago, so it was great to see him (or her?) do so well. The herd on our reserve is growing nicely, and is now standing at over 20 elephants, which is a great success. As one can see on the photo, there are herd members of all ages amongst them, so the kind of social behavior our guests can observe here is optimal. Elephants are very smart, and they have a very complex social fabric and code that runs their families and herds, so they are a clear favourite for researchers … and safari fans.

… that just takes your breath away. Here’s the setting. Photo taken yesterday.

We left this morning, picking up on some fresh tracks of rhino … and not 500m further, we found an imposing lone male rhino! He was relaxed, and allowed some amazing pictures for our guests. It’s not easy for safari fans to get this close to a rhino in free nature, so this was a highlight of the day already right off the start. Great start to the day indeed!

We also followed cheetah tracks, and did find a couple of very relaxed cheetahs hanging around in the dry riverbed, enjoying some morning sun and otherwise a good life. I have been posting so many photos of cheetahs recently, I will not do so today. 😉

We spent a really nice break at one of our many dams, for a drink break, enjoying the sighting of a huge male hippo, doing his usual shows to impress and who’s the boss in this dam. Well, we left his kingdom to him, and he must be satisfied now. Our guests also were, because they got some really top quality photos done!