Geo: -24.7605, 26.3246This afternoon I went for a drive with Paul to Abjaterskop Gate to pick up staff returning from leave. We drove a different route than normal. Along the river we saw an elephant standing in the river's shallow edge as it drank water. Further along the track we spotted some white rhinos. A young one was walking towards us. Its little horn seemed to be missing. Then to the left of us another white rhino appeared out of the bush. It was an adult and behind it was another young rhino. We followed the three of them as they walked to an open area. I took a few photos of the three rhinos and then we drove away and left them in peace. Closer to the gate we had to stop as there was ... read more

Geo: -23.558, 24.1057For most of the night we heard the lions loudly contact calling and later in the morning when we checked the camera trap we saw that last night they had been very close by. We left the camp site at about 6am. Paul drove us in the direction that he thought they would be. He was right. Less 150 metres from our camp site we came across a pride of 12 lions! They were slowly walking along the track towards us. There were three generations of lions, including many young ones. I couldn't believe that they were so close to our unfenced camp site. They were gorgeous to watch. Paul reversed so that they could continue walking along the track. At one stage they were about less than a metre outside of my window, ... read more

Geo: -23.4228, 24.0445Another early start this morning, as we left our camp site at 6:30am. Last night had been a rather cool night, if tonight is also cool I will have to get out my hot water bottle. We had heard lions contact calling in the distance during the night and hoped that we would find them this morning. Paul had a quick check of the campcsite, he was hoping to find animal tracks in the sand. Unfortunately nothing had walked through here last night. We drove the same route as yesterday morning. Our morning sightings included a large herd of gemsbok and springbok in the middle of another dry pan, a male kudu, various birds and an ostrich family with 10 chicks. This morning we stopped at the same camp site as yesterday for our ... read more

Geo: -23.4644, 24.2135This morning we woke up at 5am and packed a few last minute items into the car and then left the lodge at 5:30am. It took us just under an hour to drive through the park. Strangely enough we didn't see any animals on the drive. We exited the park through Abjaterskop Gate. It was a short drive to the Botswana border. We passed through all the border checks very quickly and easily. For once we honestly had nothing to declare as we were buying all our food in Gaborone. A little bit after 7am we got to the mall in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. Here we were to buy our food for the next 6 days. Unfortunately the supermarket – Pick n Pay did not open until 8am, so we had breakfast ... read more

Geo: -24.7805, 26.2697After work today I went with Paul for a drive to pick up staff from Derdepoort Gate. We also went to the general dealer to buy a few (overpriced) groceries, fill up Paul's work vehicle with fuel and enjoy an ice-cream. On the way back to the lodge we came across many white rhinos – a large crash of 7. I find it to be such an amazing sight to watch these fragile creatures who existence is threatened by human greed. The rhinos were only a few metres or so from the road and were more than happy to continue eating grass as we watched them. They slowly moved along the road and we drove behind them. Then the one with its behind facing us started to move backwards, slowly getting closer to our ... read more