April 27, 2025
Our final morning game drive. The boys were not happy to be waking up early, but will be even more upset with the 5am wakeup tomorrow. We explored a northern portion of the reserve via the only available route due to the trail flooding. There was a jackal scavenging by the site of yesterday’s kudu kill but no sign of the cheetah or other jackal friends. It was a quiet morning for animal sightings but not for Ollie chatter. He’s been plotting for the “mega Pokemon fight” we are meant to have tonight.
Its funny how we’re still excited to see all the animals, but with the more abundant ones, we act like we would on seeing a deer near the highway back home. We yell out “warthog!”or “kudu!” and then keep driving along. Zebra, rhino, baboon, water buck and impala also fall into this category.
A day or two ago, there were a few zebra in the road holding up our truck’s progress. Joe reached out and slapped one of the zebra butts and it then excitedly galloped off the road. The kids roared with laughter and loved this “butt slap”. Now, each time the kids see a zebra in our way or otherwise, they yell “slap its butt!!”
We had morning coffee and snacks in an open field with zebra and warthogs roaming around. This was our sunniest day yet and were looking forward to a dip in the pool later on. It felt hot to us, but Joe told us it gets up to 44 degrees Celsius (111 F!) in their summer and they still take guests out on game drives, but usually at 5am sharp.
On the drive back to the lodge, we stopped to check out the little yellow fruits I’ve seen growing by the road. We learned these are actually poison apples (devil’s apples) and even animals can’t eat them so naturally the boys had to pretend to eat them.
There were loads of zebra and warthogs by the watering hole when we got back to the lodge so we made our way to the underground viewing spot. The daytime views here were really great. Kyle and I daydreamed of having a quiet morning coffee or a quiet happy hour drink here, but acknowledged that that likely wasn’t in the cards for us.
The boys went on an early afternoon animal tracking drive with Joe. They made leopard and hyena paw print plasters which came out great but seem like they may be a pain to get home. Joe told us that the hour long adventure with the boys was “fun, tiring and chatty”.
We then had some pool time on this beautiful day before the afternoon game drive.
Len fell asleep just a few minutes into the drive. We had been hoping to see a giraffe as it was one of the last big animals on our list. Joe radioed to a bunch of guides and found one near our area on the reserve. We chased it for ~45 minutes before finding a path that allowed for a sighting. Lucky for Len, he woke up just in time.
The male Southern giraffe stood around and had a snack, allowing us to check him out for ~15 minutes before he moved on.
We then drove on seeking a daytime elephant sighting as we have only seen them at their nightly pool visits. Joe found elephant tracks and sped to find one, but we didn’t end up catching a sighting. But, we did catch a stunner of a final sunset on the reserve.
While having sundowners in a field, Joe walked away and came back with a giant bug. We thought we had seen big crickets before, but this one takes the cake. This was a Parktown prawn or African king cricket. Joe nudged it with a stick and it made a creepily loud hissing sound. The boys then took turns holding the prawn while it hung on the end of a stick. Kyle gave them each a jump scare when he screamed which then caused each boy to scream and throw the stick on the ground. We also had our big pokemon fight which felt anticlimactic after the multi-day build up. On the drive back to the lodge, we saw a spotted owl perched in a tree.
We requested to have dinner in our room tonight to give us time to get organized and try to get the boys to sleep a bit earlier. The dinners in the main lodge, while lovely, are typically ~2 hour affairs and we knew we didn’t have the stamina for this on our last night. The hotel team must have misunderstood our intentions for room service as they prepared us a bubble bath and decorated our bed with rose petals and towels shaped like hearts. On seeing this, the boys then excitedly ran to their room to see if they got the same surprise. They didn’t, and this caused some upset and tears from Len which felt misplaced as he and Ollie got to utilize the ready to go bubble bath.
