30th May 2012 – Stay at Satara Camp

30th May 2012 – Stay at Satara Camp

As usual we left camp at 6am to go out for our morning game drive. It was most definitely our quietest morning drive so far. After driving for around 1½ hours we arrived at Leeupan waterhole to see what we would see – not much. There were a few giraffes some impala and some birds but that was it. We did hear what we thought were hyenas chattering but we couldn’t see them.

Leaving Leeupan we saw a rhino with its baby in the road but as soon as they heard us they bolted – they were very nervous which I guess is understandable given all the rhino poaching that is happening in the park at the moment.


Soon after this we saw 3x lionesses in the road but they were on the move and walking from one side of the road to the other. There were some wildebeest on one side and one of the lionesses chased them which was great action to witness. She was in reality too far away to catch one but as she started the run the two wildebeest closest to her were not on the same wave length and ran in opposite directions and collided head-on. They had enough of a head start to still get away but it was nearly a fatal mistake. We didn’t stay with them long as they soon wandered off into the bushes.

Further along, on the riverbed of Siloweni we saw a herd of around 17 elephants including 5 babies. This was great to see as we hadn’t had a good sighting of a herd of elephants on this trip so far. We sat and watched them for a bit wondering if the lionesses would come down to the water as they were not far away and had been walking in this direction, but they didn’t come so we moved on.


We then stopped off at Tshokwane Picnic Spot Wayne witnessed a group of vervet monkeys steel a man’s breakfast that he had left unattended for a minute! As we left the picnic spot we saw around 25 giraffes in the waterbed. We had never seen this many giraffes all congregated in the same area. They we just eating and enjoying the early morning sunshine. It was quite a sight!

Further along, at Mazith Dam we saw 3 elephants, a small herd of zebras and a large herd of waterbuck as well as a couple of hippos and a heron!

By 11am we had arrived at Satara and as we couldn’t check in until 2pm we went out for another drive. After driving for about 5 minutes, we were stopped by a car coming from the opposite direction who told us about a pride of 16 lions that were stationary around 16km ahead. We rushed down the S100 to where they were so we could see if they were still there. They were about 200m from the road so the sighting wasn’t great but we decided to sit and watch them. We were pleased that we did as we witnessed a few good things. The best thing we saw was a herd of zebras walk towards the lions and one of the lionesses hid and stalked them. At this point Wayne turned into David Attenborough, whispering things like “she has got to get to cover, they have not noticed her, she is in behind them, they are walking straight into the trap, this is it”. Unfortunately the zebra spotted the rest of her pride which were lying down in the shade and so they started to run. She chased after them but their head start meant that she wasn’t able to catch one. It was a great thing to see and something we can now cross off our viewing wish list for this trip!

We also watched as one by one the lion cubs walked past a group of vultures and each one chased them away, playing and practising for when they go on a hunt. We sat and watched them for around 2½ hours until they went into the bush and could no longer be seen them. It was a great afternoon but also very tiring.