South Africa Safari - The Big Five

A “must do” of any trip to Africa is a safari and despite this being our third trip to SA, both of us were really looking forward to the two nights we were going to spend at the Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve.

Sabi Sabi consists of a number of luxury lodges all of which are National Geographic Unique Lodges of the World but each aimed at slightly different types of safari holidaymaker.

We stayed at the Selati Camp, an adults only lodge which only slept around 16 guests. We arrived at the lodge in time for lunch and were straightaway treated to the sight of two rhinos (a mother and her young) drinking at the watering hole directly in front of the camp. Our good luck continued as on our first afternoon safari (after lunch), our ranger spotted a leopard on the hunt for its dinner. We followed him, at extremely close range, for around 20 minutes before he disappeared into the bush.

The next morning, we set off at 6.30am for an early morning game drive and came across another leopard, but this time a female, who was out on the hunt for her breakfast. Along with the leopard, we spotted a herd of elephants, impalas, kudus, wildebeest, zebras and more, together with the occasional waterhog, mongoose, hare and even snake. There were also a lot of colourful birds that put on a great show for us. We discussed what we had seen that morning over a sumptuous champagne breakfast in the bush.

On our return to the lodge, we were relaxing on the veranda to our suite when I spotted three giraffes making their way to the watering hole (which we had a direct and uninterrupted view of from our suite).

On our second afternoon game drive we were in for more treats as we saw a very playful newly born rhino with its mother at another watering hole on the reserve. It was pure joy to watch this little one finding his feet whilst his mum kept an eye on him.

No safari would be complete without seeing the “king of the jungle” and on our last morning just as we thought our luck had run out, a pride of six lions appeared at the watering hole which the lodge overlooked! It was almost as if the lions had come to us rather than us having to seek them out. The sight of these lions was a perfect way to round off not only our safari but also our sixteen days in South Africa.