Big Five Day from Lower Sabie

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Geo: -23.9561, 31.4416

Got up and headed down one of the dirt roads that would eventually get us to one of the hides we had been to before. Stopped there for a breakfast of cereal and fruit in the hide enjoying watching the antics of the monkeys as they were warming up on the ends of the trees. There were a few birds flying about but it was fairly quiet.

We then headed out and were stopped by a vehicle that told us where they had just seen some lions. So off we raced and found the place where there were two lions that were visible and did some moving about. We watched them for awhile and then moved on.

We were driving along and Robert suddenly had me stop and there was a pearl spotted owl in the tree just sitting there. We had a enjoyable time watching it and then headed on down the road and saw some more ground hornbills. We had some nice elephant sightings as well.

Back to the camp for lunch and a short rest. It was warm so we decided to leave early on our game drive for the evening. As we crossed the bridge we saw a very large crocodile and some turtles. We were on the tar road toward that goes toward Skukuza when we saw some kori bustards. One of them was a male and was making a booming sound and then a sound like a wolf. (What does that mean?) From there we saw some buffalo along the road and then two klipspringer in the rocks. We were very happy to see them because we had not seen any on this trip.

Then a rhino along the side of the road and then a mother and baby hippo heading into the river past a very large crocodile. We were quite amazed because they seemed to close to the crocodile but all was well and no drama!

We were just past the causeway when Robert tells me to stop because he has seen a leopard! It was moving in the direction of the causeway and we got to watch it by ourselves for a short time and then the cars were upon us! We were all moving this way and that, back up and forward and wheel down the causeway for a short distance but it was lost to our view.

As we were heading down the tar road back to the camp saw a VERY large lion with a beautiful mane cross the road. By the time we got to where we had seen it cross the road, it was gone from view but we were still able to call it for the end of our Big Five sighting for the day.

The final wonderful sighting was the giant eagle owl just as it almost was too dark to be able to take a picture but we did and were very places with our days events!

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