Day 14: Beautiful Kariega

We woken at 5.30am on the dot with a call from Michael. The morning was chilly so we togged up and met him in the foyer where we had hot drinks and a muffin, before boarding the safari truck with a hot water bottle and a thick blanket each. We had been joined late on last nights safari by a Danish couple – Joergen and Shana, who were great company and who would be with us on all of our drives.

The sun was just starting to rise as we headed out into the bush. We headed to the opposite side of the river to yesterday looking for lions and elephants. In almost no time at all we stumbled across 2 lionesses looking longingly at a field full of Gazelles. Sadly they were the wrong side of the river so completely safe but it was fascinating to see how focused the lions were on potential breakfast! We got petrifyingly close to them but thankfully they just ignored us and settled down for a little rest before moving on to pastures new.

We moved on and it is really impossible to document everything we saw but it wasn’t long before we found our favourites, the elephants!

We pulled up and had coffee and hot chocolates over a fabulous viewpoint from the truck about halfway through. Michael then heard over the radio about the position of the elusive cheetahs so we set off to find them. We pulled up at the bottom of a steep slope lined with electricity pylons which we couldn’t navigate in the truck. To our amazement, Michael hopped out of the truck, and said we were walking. Luckily he was armed with a big….stick!?! Slightly nervous we headed up the hill to the last sighting of the cheetahs. We found a fresh kill, a young male ostrich, but sadly(or maybe luckily) the cheetahs were not there so we walked back down to our truck.

As we headed back for breakfast, Michael diverted away from the lodge saying he just wanted to check on something. After a few minutes we rounded a corner into an open pasture and saw that all of the staff had set up the breakfast in the bush for us! It was such a surprise and apparently only possible as it was us staying at the lodge currently. We had full choice of the continental breakfast table and they had also cooked the hot breakfast items over the fire. It really was incredible.

When we eventually returned to the lodge the girls spent several hours basking in the sun by the pool whilst I watched the Women’s World Cup final in the library with a couple of beers! Well done Spain, deserved 1-0 victors over England.

At 3.30pm we headed out again for our afternoon game drive. Michael decided to return to the cheetahs kill sight hoping they may have returned to eat. Again we nervously walked up the hill and sure enough, Michael was right! 2 Cheetahs were at the kill sight and we watched on for 10 minutes from a safe distance. They are very well camouflaged so were difficult to see at times but it was exhilarating being on foot so close to them.

We moved on and again had an amazing drive, seeing so many amazing animals. The other real highlight was a herd of 19 elephants including babies which was absolutely lovely.

We had sundowners safari style then as we drove home in the dark, we came across 4 white rhinos blocking our path just outside the lodge. We followed them along the road and thankfully they turned off before reaching the lodge otherwise things might have got quite interesting!