Game Drive # 2

Well the amazing experiences on game drives have continued.   Most of our game drives start at 6:00 am.  It is so easy to get up so early when you are going to do something as exciting as a game drive.

Basically our game drives consist of driving around the 70km sq area of Thanda on search of animals.  The guides at the Thanda 5 Star lodge as well as our guides and other people of Thanda will radio any spotting of the animals so we can decide which wayto head, depending on what animals we want to see.  There are dirty trails all around the reserve that we follow and can sometimes go off road, depending on the area and the animal we are spotting.  There are strict rules about certain animals and the etiquette when watching them.

Our second drive was just as amazing as the first.  We were lucky enough to spot the south pride of lions which consists of the mom, Sahara, her 3 cubs, and her older daughter.  Usually a lioness will keep her cubs in hiding for about 2 months.  But she actually kept them in hiding for 6 months so they haven’t been seen very often so this was a really exciting find.  The big main male of the reserve was killed a few months ago so Sahara had to raise her cubs and hunt all on her own.  Her teenage daughter has recently joined up with her again so they are a happy little family. 

The cubs are fairly inquisitive of the vehicle as it is fairly new to them.  The adults are more used to it and just carry on with their day as we watch them.  The cubs are so cute and playful.  It was great to just watch their family dynamic and follow them around for a little bit.

We almost got to watch a kill.  2 jeeps from the lodge were watching the lions which means we had to leave because there can only be 2 vehicles with the animals at once and the high paying guests at the lodge get dibs over us.  However as we went to leave the lions, they sort of turned back and were stalking some wildebeest right in front of us.  It was great for us, but we could have gotten in trouble as we ended up breaking the rules.  It was neat to see the lions body language change as they went into stealth mode.  Unfortunately they didn’t catch anything so fortunately for us we weren’t in trouble.  We also saw some zebra, who seem to travel with wildabeest quite a bit.  They were just intently watching the hunt go down.