Camp Jambulani-Day 1

We woke to an amazing buffet breakfast at Saxon. Our driver picked us up at 8:30 and we were off on a Saturday morning for a 40 minute drive to the Federal Air hanger on the other side of OR Tambo airport.

Fun Fact- OR Tambo was Nelson Mandela's law partner and president of the ANC.

We took an 1:40 flight in a 9 seater Cessna Caravan to Elephant ??---our first dirt strip airport, to drop 3 people. Then it was a 15 minute flight to our stop-Hoedspruit. We were met by John, a guide, but he was just our transport driver to the camp.

Federal Air Hanger

We drove 20 minutes to Camp Jambulani (more on the name later). On the way we saw: Giraffe, Warthogs, Zebra and Wildebeests.

Our accommodations are over the top-It is a 3 bedroom villa. See pics.

We met our Guide, Craig, who will be with us for all our adventures, Obert, our butler and Alex, our chef. After a brief tour, Alex prepared a great lunch, which we ate outside on our deck overlooking a dry riverbed. We saw a male impala and a forked tail drango while dining on smoked springbok and a Caprese salad and then Barimundi (fish). Of course we had dessert, panna cotta.

Craig set up the rest of the day as:

• A brief rest
• 4p Elephant Safari
• 6p Sundowners
• 7p- Night Safari
• Dinner in our villa based on when we get done.

Jabulani is a Big 5 private game reserve near Kruger National Park. It is fenced in and all the big 5 animals of Africa African lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, African leopard, and White/Black rhinoceros  reside in its 42,000 acres. Founded by the Roode family, it has 5 camps.

Jabulani means "happy" and is the name of an orphan elephant they took in. From this, they took in other orphan elephants and then trained them to allow humans to ride them. We did that for an hour then had cocktails and snacks at sundowners.

Then we piled into our Range Rover and had a night safari. I was thinking that maybe we might start off slow and not really see anything, which often happens....but NOOOOO...we saw 3 of the big 5 tonight.

- Buffalo (an old Duggar and a herd)
- 2 six months old lion cubs
- 2 wild elephants

Plus---Grey Heron, giraffe,Kudu, Impala, Scrub Hare, Bushback, Genet, cape griffon Vulture, horn bill and a Bush Baby (monkey).

It was amazing and that is the fitting word. Rather than bore you with dinner details you can see the menu.

Off to bed and then up at 6:30 for our morning safari.