We Won An MZNP Game Drive

[PJL]

Mountain Zebra National Park recently celebrated its 80th birthday, and we were fortunate to win a game drive voucher for 2

On the one hand it's fun to win things like that, but then of course you have to pay for accommodation to actually use it... and then pay for the kids to come along as well

Not that I'm complaining too much - it was a great excuse for us to head back to MZNP for a few days. I went with very low expectations as I know it can sometimes be hard to find the elusive animals, and we had been so lucky on our last visit that I would have been quite happy this time if we just saw some ground squirrels

I managed to get a late booking on one of the chalets for the public holiday weekend, so we set off as soon as the kids were out of school on Friday to enjoy 3 nights in the park

Fairly soon after we hit the road, I got a message through from one of the guides in Addo that the lions were snoozing close to the road on Vukani Loop. Curiosity got the better of us, so we convinced ourselves that it wasn't much of a detour to go through the park rather than round it

Sure enough, the lionesses had made a buffalo kill quite close to the road. Josie, Dawn, Duffy and the 3 cubs were all flat out after gorging themselves on the buff. One of the cubs was giving aunty Dawn a cuddle



The adults were fast asleep, but fortunately a couple of the cubs were looking around for a while







There weren't too many people at the sighting, but someone had obviously parked badly or been parked in as some car horn sounds had the cubs on high alert





Double trouble then gave us a nice pose





After a while it all became too tiring for the youngsters and they flopped down again




It would have been nice to stay longer and watch the cubs when they were more active, but we were in entirely the wrong game reserve and had the bulk of our journey still to go

[Mel]

When I first opened up here, I was like "Oh, my gosh, they allow so many lions in Mountain Zebra now?!"
So I had to go back to the beginning and actually read what you had written here. Now it makes
perfectly sense... and, wowie... those cubs have grown and look really curious about life Pretty too

Congrats on winning the drive Like you said... at the end of the day it's an excuse... to visit a fantastic park

(Since we'll be in KTP when the bookings open for my next autumn holiday, we're already making a plan
to return to Addo and Mountain Zebra then. Easier to get accomm and still totally wonderful parks to enjoy )

[Lisbeth]

[Flutterby]

The cubs are in lovely condition!

[Mel]

Coming to think of it: The cubs look all quite male... Are they males only or is there a girl too?

[Richprins]

Ja, this is a bit confusing, Peej!



But good initiative there!

This is a funny sort of a prize...what is the point? Where does one win that?

[Lisbeth]

They earn a lot of money giving prizes like that

[Mel]

[PJL]

When I first opened up here, I was like "Oh, my gosh, they allow so many lions in Mountain Zebra now?!"
So I had to go back to the beginning and actually read what you had written here. Now it makes
perfectly sense... and, wowie... those cubs have grown and look really curious about life Pretty too

Congrats on winning the drive Like you said... at the end of the day it's an excuse... to visit a fantastic park

(Since we'll be in KTP when the bookings open for my next autumn holiday, we're already making a plan
to return to Addo and Mountain Zebra then. Easier to get accomm and still totally wonderful parks to enjoy )

Sorry for the (intentional) confusion there
Not only a lot of lions, but Addo is much greener than MZNP at the moment

Coming to think of it: The cubs look all quite male... Are they males only or is there a girl too?

They're all male Mel

Nice to have you checking in Lis

The cubs are in lovely condition!

They sure are. I'm still amazed how well the lions do in Addo.... much lower mortality rate than elsewhere

Ja, this is a bit confusing, Peej!



But good initiative there!

This is a funny sort of a prize...what is the point? Where does one win that?

Yep sorry for the confusion RP
They had a number of FB competitions running as part of their 80th birthday celebrations, but this one was a somewhat hidden SP forum one
Like others have said, it's all just a money making scheme, but we had been planning to get back to MZNP soon so this was good incentive

[PJL]

The rest of our drive up to MZNP was fairly smooth, but arriving at the gate at 4:30pm gave us little time to explore that evening. We decided to just do a detour round Ubejane loop on our way to the camp. It was becoming great golden Karoo light for photography, so pretty much everything got snapped along the way

First up was a pale chanting goshawk



Peering out of the bushes nearby was gemsbok catching the evening light



The kids were very happy to see their first ground squirrels of the trip, but the squirrels weren't hanging around for long on this occasion



The main pan on Ubejane had a decent amount of water which was totally different to our last two visits when it was completely dry
There was quite a bit of activity by the waterhole every time we went past, and this first evening there was a jackal scampering around plus some first views of the iconic mountain zebra as well as a couple of blue cranes









We saw plenty of yellow mongoose this trip, but for some reason every time I pointed my camera at them they ran off
This became something of a running joke throughout the trip... so this was the one and only shot I managed to get this time