Saturday 26th August - Delaporte Day! continued...
We gathered in the carpark at Lower Sabie for our first ever Sunset Drive. And what a lovely experience it was! We got that rare combination you always dream about on guided drives: good weather, good wildlife, and good company!
We were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by our new friend Pieter! He was the person who showed us his pictures of the Delaporte Leopard drinking the day before, which had inspired us to return to Delaporte this day. We excitedly told him of our experience there this morning and showed him our pics of the Lepoard with kill. He was genuinely excited for us and our jovial moods set the tone for a relaxed, fun evening. Another South African couple also joined us at the rear of the vehicle and as we chatted away they showed us remote camera pics of a Leopard walking past the fence at their house back home!
Early on in the drive we met some Elephants looking like they were trying to ambush passing cars.
After a few more 'usual suspects' we stopped for some distant flat Lions. While this was seemingly nothing out of the ordinary it was soon to become an amazing sighting.
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As we stopped the vehicle to tick off number two of the Big Five the call of "Rhino" suddenly rang out. To our disbelief, right there just metres from the Lions was a small group of White Rhino. We held our breath in nervous anticipation at what might happen next as the Rhinos began to walk right past the Lions.
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The Lions soon noticed the Rhinos and paid careful attention to their movements, but the Rhinos took no offence to the Lions' presence and went on their way with no fuss. We managed to get some shots where all 8 Lions and 6 Rhino are in the frame!
As the Rhinos moved off two Buffalo appeared up the hill behind them. This really got us going! Suddenly it was on, and with some quick scanning around we were able to locate some distant Elephants and proudly announce that we could see four of the Big Five at one time!
The special sightings did not end there, and as the light started to fade we were very privileged to find 2 Lionesses with 4 very small cubs preparing to bed down for a while on the H10.
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Our brains were initially quite confused by the odd colouration of the cubs until we realized that they had quite bad mange.
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This one in particular looked like it was having a most awful start to life.
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It was really sad to see how irritating the mange was, but at the same time we relished such a brilliant sighting. The cubs were so young that they had not yet been introduced to the pride. The affectionate interactions between cubs and mothers are so captivating! We would visit these Lions again later in our trip as they continued to hang out in the same area.
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The mange is hectic, shame poor cubs. 