Welcome To South Africa!
There’s my wife Alex standing on the deck of our room at the incredible Singita Boulders Lodge at Sabi Sands in South Africa….how amazing was it? Well, look who dropped by outside our room:
Singita Boulders Lodge is located on the Sand River, a perennial river in South Africa’s Sabi Sand Game Reserve that flows through the reserve and eventually joins the Sabie River near the Kruger National Park. That means Elephants will wander by anytime they want!
The lodge’s design and name were inspired by the ancient, weathered boulders found along the river banks where the lodge is situated.
This is the lobby of the safari lodge, and Singita was phenomenal in every way…here’s how we arrived from Johannesburg:
We were on a five seater plane, and after we landed we were greeted by these two:
That’s George, our incredible Safari Guide on the left, and Louis, the brilliant Safari Tracker on the right! We spent three incredible days with them – as they expertly guided us around the “Elephant Superhighway”:
Yes, Elephants love the warm sandy roads where George navigates us, and when they take over, we wait for them to pass by!
This was our view every day: a sunrise safari to begin the day, and a “sun downer” to end it…with Louis perched on the front bumper in a special seat while George navigated and scoured the landscape for animals as well.
We saw so much our first two days, but both George and Louis were frustrated they hadn’t found us any Lions yet.
Singita Sabi Sands is known as a home to several Lion prides, two known well as the Mhangeni and Tsalala prides.
So what did we all decide to do? Go find those Lions and make a documentary about it!
Cue The Cameras!
That’s Alex interviewing George, and Louis spoke on camera as well – because we wanted to document our Lion search for the cameras!
Let’s listen as George explains how difficult it is to spot Lions in the tall grass:
Knowing that they blend in to the tall brown grasses, we stayed focused as George and Louis headed into the brush.
Lions are at the top of the predator hierarchy within Singita Sabi Sands. There is a territorial pride of lions that occupy the majority of the Singita property, and they are known as the Mhangeni Pride.
George explained to Alex why a tall Tracker has an advantage:
(tall tracker advantage)
Having George as our Guide and Louis as our Tracker…we were with an incredible team with a lifetime of experience living in the area…they were so much fun to safari with…which went something like this:
We drove all over Singita’s private reserve – and we saw so many unique animals in the wild…once again, they roam free, and Louis and George would track them by their paw prints in the sandy road…Louis explains how a simple stick helps that process:
With both George and Louis finding Lion tracks, they knew we were close, and after a half hour, we rounded a corner and found this:
Wow!
It was so cool to see this pride of twelve Lions resting in a clearing!
We pulled up and sat quietly to watch them sleep…as our guides gave us lots of interesting information about how to track a Lion.
Yes, it was a pride of a dozen Lions, all sleeping off a big hunt they had finished in the morning…yes, our first sighting was a Lion Safari Slumber Party – and we got very very close to them!
This was our first Lion encounter, and it was a bit unnerving to be so close in an open air Jeep, but Louis and George explained that Lions expect their prey to be at their eye level – and usually trying to escape.
We are something they don’t see as food, and we are told to stay in the jeep, do not stand up or wave our arms about, and we were fine!
Plus, they were really out of it – take a look as several move around looking for a comfortable place to crash for a few hours:
Yes, They Were Really Asleep!
George explained that he spotted the tracks and confirmed with one of tho other Singita Guides that they had stopped to sleep off a “kill”,!
It was fascinating, and Louis was happy that they tracked such a large pride of Lions for us!
This incredible Lion adventure followed our Leopard encounter with George and Louis from the day before:
We saw Leopards two days in a row – here’s the story of our sightings!
Singita Boulders was magical!
Here’s a closer look at the festive food welcome we got when we arrived…see it here!
This was a life-changing adventure for us: we truly do look at the world differently. See why we no longer use the phrase “Big 5” when discussing safari animals:
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Categories: Africa, Exotic Travel, Memoirs, nature, safari, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Memoir
johnrieber 
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