Africa August 6-22, 2015: Wednesday August 12, 2015 -Ivory Sands

After our 6 am wake-up call we are in the RR at 6:30 and on the road with Dumay and Terrance. But wait! Dumay mentions that he saw some Vultures circling the hotel and so we trek 100 yards in front of the villas and spot a male adult (8 years old) lion and one 3 year-old female and her brother near the river. We see them on the move and head to the RR and track them. We got some amazing views of the three.

We ran across some bushboks, white crown black wings. Then we had to go on what is known as a Ferrari Safari. This is when you have to really go fast but never over 30KMH to get to something special before it leaves. In this case, we completed our Big 5 by finding a Leopard. But not one…but two males who were cavorting for the same territory. It was amazing as we watched them for an hour hoping for a fight.

As it turned out it was more like the build-up to a Floyd Mayweather fight. Lots of preening, snarling and posturing but in the end no fighting. Check out these pics and videos.

This is the kind of terrain you have to go through sometimes to see game.

The Leopards in this area are the second highest density on earth. They are stalkers and patient hunters.

Then we saw the Murillo tree, white backed vultures, and the white poop from Hyenas. It is white because they eat the bones of their prey.

We observed the Uforbia Candelabra tree, which is the most poisonous tree in the area.

We saw some Impala’s grooming each other. This is known as Allo Grooming. They can splay their teeth to act as a comb.

Now a bit about where we are. The Kruger National Park is 160,000 acres. The Sabi Sand is a private game reserve adjacent to Kruger and unlike Jambulani, there are no fences. Sabi is 65,000 acres. The area we will cover is 15 square miles. What makes this area special is that the Ivory Sand fronts the Sabi river and the game area intersects with the Sand river---this makes it a great place to see a lot of different wild life.

We headed back to the lodge around 10 and we had breakfast on the deck overlooking the river. We took a short drive to the river to check out some hippos and on the way we saw African Fish Eagles—a very large and territorial bird. We saw a pair and a baby. The dad chased the baby away and then he and mama made sweet bird-love--- for about 5 seconds.

Then we saw some vervet monkeys and an Emerald Spotted Dove. Then the piece de resistance---a pod of 20 hippos. What made this so cool was the high activity level of this group.

We came back to the lodge and worked out, chilled out and had a snack. We have been eating so much we all skipped lunch!

At 3:30 we went for our afternoon game drive. We headed out to see something Felice was highly interested in, Wild Dogs. And we saw one.

Then we tracked some vultures that appeared to be headed to some food. But alas, it was a false alarm but we took the RR into some great off-roading.

We saw a Leopard, Orchid (bromeliad) and the grave of Malone, who was murdered by the laborers building a railroad in the area.

Lastly we went way off road to see the Cheetah.

On the way back we spotted the same three lions we saw late yesterday that were eating the Impala. They were playing in a dry river-bed. The cubs were so cute!! And Mom kept a watchful eye.