28th May 2012 – Stay at Lower Sabie Camp

28th May 2012 – Stay at Lower Sabie Camp

Again we had set our alarm for 5.25am – this time we were both already awake so it was much easier to get up. At 5.50am we were in our car and queuing with other guests waiting for the gate to open at 6am.

After our long game drive yesterday we had decided to do a morning drive before heading back to camp for a rest and lunch etc.

During our morning drive as stopped off at a picnic sight to go to the loo and another visitor commented that our tyre appeared to be a bit flat. During our morning drive we saw kudu, giraffes, hippos, baboons, rhinos, a snake (around 50cm long), millipede (around 15cm long) and a little tortoise in the road as well as elephant, klipspringer and impala.


We than saw 4 CHEETAHS!! This was very much unexpected especially as we were so close to camp. There were around a dozen cars already pulled up so we were very pleased to get a spot to be able to see them.

They were on the other side of the river to where we all were. Being far away was probably a positive thing in this instance as the cars did not scare them off. They looked like they were searching for something to hunt but unfortunately there was nothing around for them. They walked along the riverbank which meant we got some reasonable photos. We were very pleased for our 400mm lens. Unfortunately the man in the car next to us wasn’t this lucky as he just had a standard lens on his camera. Much to our amusement, to try and take a closer photo of the cheetahs, he tried to put his binoculars at the end of his camera before taking the photo. I don’t think this worked but it gave us a good laugh! We spent around 1 hour with the cheetahs watching them until an elephant bull appeared close by and we saw the cheetahs stalk towards him but he just ran at them flapping his ears which chased the cheetahs off up into the bushes behind. We didn’t get back to camp until 12noon, but we didn’t mind as we were delighted to have been able to see them. As soon as we arrived back at camp we wanted to look at the photos and were pleased with the outcome.

After looking at the photos we had a rest and went for some lunch at the camp restaurant before getting our tyre pressure checked – it had gone down a lot! We got it re-pressurised before deciding to head back out for an afternoon game drive. This started off a bit uneventful, not really seeing much although we did getsome good giraffe photos and also saw some wildebeest, elephants, impala, zebra, vervet monkeys etc. One the way back to camp we decided to stop off at the nearby waterhole (Sunset Dam) where we watched the sun set and also took some good photos of hippos fighting, of a hippo ‘roaring’ at a heron as well as seeing the local baboon family cause havoc with all the cars trying to enter the gate before it closed! It was quite comical and thankfully we managed to enter the gate with 6 minutes to spare!