Day Three - Lebombo Lodge (Our last day in safari)

---

Today is our last full day on safari as we head to the airport at 8:30am tomorrow morning. Kevin plans to go out tomorrow for a short time but I’d rather rest up a bit and pack for our 36 hour six flight trip back to San Diego. Today we were one of the last vehicles to leave the lodge and all of the others before us headed in one direction. Gary didn’t want to follow the crowds, if you want to really call them crowds as only about 30 people have access to the reserve we explore every day. The public have to stay on the paved roads and cannot get out of their windshielded cars. We, on the other hand, go down dirt roads, go off road and sometimes get out of our open air vehicles and it’s all in our private comcession that the public cannot enter. We wanted to find the lion we heard roaring last night. Well, we were too late. His tracks showed him crossing the road and heading out of our private concession, a place we can‘t off road.

So we continued driving until we came to two big leafy trees, a place where Sully and Gary knew was the home of three big owls. Kevin took some great photos of them as you will see. And then ... Sully spotted some lion tracks. We followed them to two male lions lying in the shade of a tree. These were two brothers of the white lion and his brother that we saw yesterday. We sat and stared at each other with the lions occasionally sleeping or sitting up and looking around. They eventually got up and moved beneath another shady tree. After a while, two other vehicles joined up with us so it was time for them to enjoy our find so we moved on. On the way back to the lodge for breakfast, we observed some dung beetles hard at work.

By the way, Kevin turned the big 60 today. I‘m sure the lodge is planning so special but we will have to wait until after my last game drive this afternoon.

Our drive this afternoon consisted of a hike to some cliffs that overlooked the river and our lodge. We spotted several crocodiles and a hippo out of the water, which is an usual site. Sully and Gary gave us more education on reading animal tracks and we analyzed the tracks of a lion, tortoise, giraffe, many impalas and millipedes. We enjoyed a sundowner, sitting on a cliff overlooking the vast flatlands and listening to the many bird species saying goodnight to each other. On the way home, we tried to hear the roar of a lion but were unsuccessful.

We enjoyed a wonderful last dinner in South Africa culminating in a birthday cake for Kevin with the staff singing the African version of happy birthday to him.

---

Photos

A large giraffe crossing the road
It’s 18 feet tall

Snail on the road
This snail measured 9 inches long and can grow twice that size.