Safari Lodge Londolozi Private Game Reserve

The Critchfield family while on safari stayed in the camps of
Satara and Olifants, thease camps are situated in the
central and northern sectors of the park. Sightings
were generally good with many different sightings of
Elephant, Giraffe, Buffalo, Zebra, Wildebeest as well as
sightings of Hyena, Crocodiles, Baboon etc. The
Critchfield family also experianced wonderful sightings
on ...

... park is the site of the popular eyewitness viral video Battle at KrugerThe park lies in the east of South Africa, in the eastern parts of Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. It is one of the largest national parks in the world, with an area of almost 12,000 miles. The park is approximately 216 miles long, and has an ...

... everything – this post would become a novel (and I am sure some of you are already thinking that my posts are already like novels – but you probably stopped reading long ago anyway). We got right up next to elephant, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, rhinos, hippos, buffalo, bush babies various antelope species, etc.

For our next drive, our guides set their sights on cheetah – the fastest and possibly most majestic animal in the world. These guys ...

... all in good fun as we joked with Pollen, the employee who had to deal with her for the last 30 minutes.

Pollen greeted us with some punch and iced coffee and we were shown to the room. We told Pollen about the kill we had witnessed earlier, and he tells the two bellhops they better find something good tonight to impress us. Apparently the bellhops at Royal Legend double as the ranger and tracker. I guess this was our fist sign ...

... kill and then they all share the meat. So rather than wait 3 days for the leopard to come out, we continue on to find some white rhino. We found a mother with a baby. We followed them around for a bit. Rhinos are also very cool as no one messes with them and they kind of mind their own business. There are also black rhinos, but these are very hard to spot, and there are only 5 of them in the entire Thornybush Reserve. We then find a group ...

... a mother with her 4 cubs. The cubs are all 8 months old (just like the ones from Cape Town). We follow them around and watch them for about 20 minutes. The cheetahs could care less about the car as we drive right next to them. The rangers are also friendly in Thornybush, and Van radios to the other 4 cars driving around this evening giving them directions to the cheetahs. We had to stay for a while so that the other rangers could ...

... tea/coffee break in the African bush 9:00ish Return to the lodge for breakfast 10:00am Game walk 2:00pm Lunch 3:45pm Afternoon game drive 6:00ish Sundowner in the African bush 7:00pm Return to lodge with Amarulla welcome back drink 7:45pm Drinks in bar 8:00pm Dinner in outdoor setting around an open fire In general the game drives got us up and personal with the animals since we were in open-top vehicles and we ...

... over the fire and enjoyed a few drinks while we talked about the upcoming weeks ahead. Up to this point we have covered over 2,500 kilometers in a fairly short time, and next up was Kruger National Park. Although we could have stayed busy in Drakensberg for a week easily, we had to take off after only one day there to keep on our schedule of leaving Johannesburg on the overland tour by the 28th ...

... in the mud. We then stumbled upon a family of very rare water bucks. These are beautiful creatures and we watched them for quite a while even though they weren't doing much. We kept driving and seeing lots of other animals, giraffes, zebras, crazy deer and antelopes, weird birds, etc.. And then we saw it. A gargantuan grey form behind a tree. I'm not kidding, I about peed my pants with excitement. Seeing a bull elephant in the wild is one of the ...

... to say driving on the left-hand side is so freakin' odd! It took both of our brains to think through every turn to make sure we were going the right way. Oh, and they have no grid system and their streets change names every mile or so for no apparent reason. So navigating has been a real treat! I almost started crying the first night because we tried for more than 30 minutes just to get on the interstate. Once we got out of Jo'burg the same evening we flew in, we ...