South Africa 2023: Day 14: Shimungwe Lodge Game Drives 1 & 2

We moved from Thabamati to Shimungwe Lodge today. This place is much more modest, but still nice. It's very homey.

As I walked out from my hut this female Nyala was right outside my door.

We went on a fabulous game drive. We saw elephant and giraffe, but the ranger and tracker wanted to find a pride of lions. It took a bit, but by following the tracks they found it. Six females, 3 males, and 1 cub. They were doing their usual job at first--sleeping.

Yawning to wake up.

And looking cute!

Here is the cub nursing.

Walking with Mom.

Dad

Baby and Dad walking with the pride.

We then found some vultures. Really amazing.

We had our sundowner by this little pavilion while watching elephants.

Game drive #1 was a complete success!

Friday morning was game drive #2. It is just the 3 of us at the lodge, so it was a private game drive. We started out the morning with the moon setting and the sun rising.

Right off the bat we saw an elephant.

There were lots of birds along the way. Lucan, our ranger, is great at stopping and pointing out different birds. This is a starling (quite different from the ones in the US).

A Fork-Tailed Drungo

The bush here is much thicker and dense than I've seen anywhere else. We are always off road in the hilly terrain. Here our tracker Prince uses clippers to cut away tree limbs in our path.

We were looking for Cape buffalo when Prince spotted rhinos so deep in the bush that none of us could see them.

Here they de-horn the rhinos so they don't get killed by poachers. Lucan told us that the horns grow back every three years.

Here is a short video of the three male rhinos we encountered. This rhino viewing was extraordinary. I have never been this close to rhinos and we got to stay with them for a long period of time. Amazing.

As Lucan and Prince were tracking the Cape buffalo, we came across two beautiful vultures.