The last morning of our stay was another 6AM start to the game drive. When the alarm sounded at 5 I was surprisingly active and was showered and ready in no time flat. Deb decided that she was going to have a lie in rather than another drive so I headed off to coffee and rusks by myself. It was incredibly peaceful at 5:30 in the morning with the sun just coming up over the tree tops and for 20 minutes or so I pretty much had the place to myself – wonderful. In the absence of Deb it meant there were only 5 of us on the drive, Adam and Brad and a wonderful couple from Pretoria called Danelo and Corrie (hope I got that right!) who had arrived when we did and were also leaving today. The 5 of us duly climbed into the game vehicle and we headed off for the lions once more. It seems they had made a kill of a small buffalo overnight and Chris thought we stood a very good chance of some much better viewing than the previous day. How right he was.
We saw pretty much nothing on the way to the lions but once there we made our way very quickly to the location of the kill. All the drivers of the game vehicles keep in touch via radio so if one finds something worth seeing they can spread the word to the others. Thanks to this we knew exactly where to go for the kill. There were several vehicles around when we arrived but we seemed to have special status. Mabula only allow 2 vehicles at a time to view any of the Big 5 and there were 2 vehicles viewing when we arrived plus 3 queuing our side and I believe there was at least one coming in from the other side. Never the less, the moment a spot was free we were the next vehicle to go in. Whether being at Kwafubesi rather than Mabula Lodge put us higher up the pecking order I have no idea but still, in we went.
The 2 males were at the kill when we arrived. One was down at the kill eating and the other walked into the road just as we got there and flopped down on his side. You could see he’d already eaten his fill from how distended his belly was as he lay there. We watched for a few minutes and just before we had to leave to let others in one of the females rose from where she had been lying in the grass, half behind a tree. If she hadn’t stood up and approached the kill you would never have known she was there. We then left the scene to others and took a spin round the rest of the lion enclosure.
This proved far more productive than the previous day and we saw a few more animals around the place. In particular we got our closest look at the White Rhino, coming across a small group of 4 adults and a young one very close to the road. To see them so close was one of my highlights of the trip and definitely a great big tick in the rhino box. We carried on around the enclosure as the plan was to come back to the lions from the other side but we were also looking for the other females as only one had been at the kill. We didn’t find the other females, although we did find some pretty good lion tracks at the side of the track (Chris said they were probably the males on the way to the kill site), but we did pass impala and wildebeest plus some black-backed jackals on the way back to the lion kill. We saw the jackals again as we left the kill the second time as they were close by and waiting their turn at the table.
The second visit to the kill found us slightly better positioned than the first one and we got a much better view of the male that was eating. The other male was still pretty much laid out in the road looking stuffed and after a few minutes the female also decided to have a sprawl in the road which gave us a great view of her also. The male on the kill eventually picked most of it up and headed into the bush. I think he got fed up of being watched while he ate! At this juncture the female seized her chance and proceeded to claim the horns and part head that had been left behind for her own. I must say, it didn’t look great to me but she certainly seemed to be enjoying it the way she tucked into it.
The drive back to camp was relatively uneventful, although we did stop at one point and Chris took us up some rocks to where we had a really good view around the game park. He also pointed out various plants and shrubs and told us a bit about them Particularly something called Monkey’s Tail which seems to have been put to various uses over the years. The ranger/guides are incredible people, they seem to know everything about everything that can be found in the park, as well as being the driver, spotter and also the guard for each drive. It’s their job to keep us safe and out of harms way as well as to make sure we have a great time. My hat’s off to them all and especially to Chris who was awesome the whole weekend!
After the final drive was completed it was back for breakfast followed by packing and settling bills. Around 10 we climbed into the game vehicle for the last time and were driven back to the main lodge where the cars had been left. From there we made our good-byes and headed off on the drive back to Johannesburg and the end of an amazing weekend.
