South Africa (Safari)- Day 3- From Lions Before Breakfast to Dinner Under The Milky Way

As ambient sun was just starting to roll into our tent, the phone rang with our early morning wake up call to get us up and ready for safari. The morning safari left at 6, and it turns out we had incredible timing. After seeing so many great animals out of the gate yesterday, we asked Celebrate if we could prioritize lions and he thought the morning would be the best time to do it. Drove over to a big rocky hill and scoured the rocks and foliage seeking lions.  

As we were pulling along the backside, we found them! They were coming back from hunting and we spotted them as they were coming back onto the rocks to hide in the shade to avoid the sunny day. The moms headed up the hill at once, but there were 6 cubs who were definitely curious and wanted to see what we were about.  One of them in particular is going to grow up to be a very big male lion—huge paws and very curious nature! The second we were there he started walking over to us to investigate. Eventually they headed back up the hill as well, though we could still see their heads on the top of the rocks as we started driving away. Such a cool start to the day! We saw lions!!

We weren’t sure what else we would be able to find, but we also saw zebras, water bucks, jackals, more guinea fowl, a giraffe, many more wildebeest, impala & nyala, and most importantly, 2 rhinos! Brennan in particular really wanted to see rhinos and they were definitely cool in person—we saw a small female and a younger rhino, but Celebrate told us there is a bigger male on the reserve as well so fingers crossed we find him too on one of our drives.

After a wonderful morning tour, arrived back at 9am, ate some breakfast and then had the middle of the day for relaxing by the pool.  Such a great balance to the trip—fun activity but feels like a beach vacation in some ways too since there is ample time for relaxation and true vacationing. Met up at 3pm for tea, then hit the road at 4.

The second game drive of the day started off on really fun note when we came across a journey of giraffes.  Some were definitely only a few years old, but to see them crossing a plain in such a large group was truly amazing.  With his amazing vision, Celebrate noticed an elephant and rhino on the other side of the river so we hastened over there and managed to see an elephant as it walked down to the water as well as a mother and baby rhino.

 We then stopped by Pride Rock for our sundowners where we got to see cave paintings as well as got closer to a group of monkeys. On the drive back to camp, we passed a large gathering of several herd animals including zebra, blesbok, and wildebeest all hanging out together on the plain.

We were surprised to hear that we had to wrap up the game drive a little earlier yesterday evening but it turns out it was for a great reason—the reserve planned an outdoor dinner on the riverbank!  While the river does run through camp, this was actually at a beautiful setting about 20 minutes from camp. A similar setup to the boma with tables, a bonfire, etc but just so incredible that we got to eat dinner in scenery like this.