[Seth] High above Sabi Sands

Ulusaba

After a couple of days at Kirkman, we headed to the northern part of Sabi Sands to stay at Ulusaba.  Six years ago, Kara and I had visited Sabi Sands (on our first chance to visit South Africa) and we had seen the Ulusaba Rock Lodge on one of our game drives and we had always wanted to come back and stay there.  

Spectacular Setting

While most of the Sabi Sands is low rolling hills, there are rock outcroppings on the north end of the reserve and on one of these is Rock Lodge.  The high view point allows for spectacular views from the lodge over a wide expanse of the reserve.  

Rock Lodge is perched on the middle hill

While we were staying there we could see elephants, zebras, impala, kudu, waterbuck and many other animals just from our deck.  

The lodge is incredibly well thought out and the decorations are amazing.  The land was purchased by Richard Branson and at least until recently he came down 4-6 times per year.  I must admit, Branson's strategy of finding places where he wants to live and then opening up luxury hotels to create income while he is not there is brilliant.  

Game Drives

While we stayed at Ulusaba, we had an incredible guide and tracker team (Jason and Don).  

Our family with Jason, our guide (on the left) and Don, our tracker (on the right)

In Kirkman's we had seen most of the animals that we expected to see in Sabi Sands so we didn't feel any pressure to see any particular animal while at Ulusaba so we told Jason and Don to just find the best wildlife interactions that they could -- although we did tell them that we would love to see a cheetah but that we didn't expect to since they were so rare in Sabi Sands.  From the moment we left the lodge on the first game drive, it was clear that Jason and Don were going to find the animals.  As we drove off the hill, they found lion tracks and started teaching us how to recognize the different animal tracks and scat that was found along the road.  Over the course of the next two days, they led us to a leopard den (with twin baby leopards), found a pride of lions, identifying dozens of birds, walked us to within yards of a journey of giraffes, and perhaps most importantly, drove us all the way across the Ulusaba Reserve to find a cheetah.

Mother leopard and her cub

Beals and a giraffe

Cheetah time

Dancing and Stars

In addition to the incredible game drives, we had the chance to have lunch in the bush next to a river where we found hippo tracks, water birds like pied kingfishers and African fish eagles, and saw bushbucks (a small antelope).  When we left, we were surprised to find lions asleep on the bank of the river just a short distance away.  Moments like this were what made us grateful that Jason always had his gun with him -- although he told us that he had never had to fire it while he was with clients.  In the evening, we also had the chance to see some of the local African tribesmen (tribespeople?) perform some of their local dances and have drinks in the bush.  The dancing was pretty frenetic but so entertaining that even Cannon (who does not like this type of thing) admitted to enjoying it.

On our last evening, Jason and Don also took us to an observatory where we were able to use a telescope to find nebulae, star clusters, Jupiter and its Galilean moons and observe Earth's moon.  We have now spent more than two months in the Southern Hemisphere so it almost felt normal to have Orion in the northern skies and to see the Southern Cross above us.  

It was hard to leave.  But we now on to our next destination and are flying eight hours to the other end of Africa, Cairo.  Over the next week or two, we will be trying to immerse ourselves in ancient Egypt.