The Cohen Family Adventure Summer 2011: South Africa Safari

On Tuesday morning, August 2, a full day later than planned, we made it to the Johannesburg Airport. Unfortunately, Eric and Sadie's suitcases got lost somewhere along the way and did not make the trip to JoBurg with us. Our friend Pete, a South African native, met us at the airport and took our weary bunch under his wing. After a quick stop at the airport shops for new undies for the luggage-less Eric & Sadie, we hopped aboard a charter flight bound for the tiny airstrip at the Madikwe Reserve. As we flew across Madikwe at 1000 feet, we saw two herds of elephant, many, many giraffe, and a rhino with her baby. Andree, Sarah, & Lauren were waiting for us at the Medikwe Airstrip in the Land Rover that we'd use for our game drives. The driver of the Land Rover was our Ranger/Safari Guide, Carmen. We were finally on our African Safari!

The Leopard Rock Lodge sits in the middle of the Madikwe Game Reserve and consists of a sprawling main house with a large front deck overlooking a watering hole and an expansive back desk that leads to an outdoor pool. Spread across the property are 5 separate villas, each with a private sitting room, bedroom, bathroom with clawfoot or natural rock tub, and an outdoor rock-wall-enclosed shower. Our two families had the whole lodge to ourselves. Ari had a private villa all to himself, Eric roomed with Josh & Sadie, Dorian & Annie shared a villa, Pete & Andree and Sarah & Lauren had 2 villas on the opposite side of the property. The only rules were to stay on the pathways and to keep the doors to our villa closed so that we wouldn't have any unwanted adventures with the black mamba snakes.

Our daily routine consisted of a 3-hour morning game drive with a coffee & snack stop, followed by a huge breakfast, lunch around 2:30pm, a 3-hour late-afternoon game drive with a "Sun-Downers" snack stop, and ended with dinner back at the lodge or a braai (South African barbecue) at the boma (outdoor fireplace) located at the back of the property. If we weren't eating, we were out sighting game...

Pete & Andree introduced us to Rusks - hard, dry biscotti-shaped biscuits (delicious!), Biltong - a kind of cured meat that originated in South Africa, and Droëwors - another popular South African snack food made by drying a traditional, coriander-seed spiced boerwors sausage. We ate rusks on our morning game drives and biltong & droëwors on our afternoon game drives.

In addition to our game drives, we regularly saw elephants passing through the Leopard Rock watering hole, less than 20 feet from our deck. On one particualr elephant sighting, we counted 26 elephants at our watering hole - about 10 "babies" and 16 adults.

Here are some of the highlights of our first day:

All of us at the Madikwe airstrip with our pilots

Hopping on board our Land Rover

Sadie & Lauren are happy to see each other!

The front door of The Leopard Rock Lodge

An elephant visits our watering hole!

Ari taking photos from our front deck

We see our first giraffe up close as we begin our afternoon game drive

Eating seedpods

Wildebest

Elephants everywhere!

Springbok

Carmen gives Ari some first aid after a fall into a pricker bush

Andree takes some photos when we stop for "Sun Downers"

An elusive rhino

Carmen heard from another guide that there was a pride of lions in the bush with a fresh kill. We drove off road and were able to locate the lions in two separate locations. Carmen used her spotlight to illuminate the feeding lions. We were able to get within 15-20 feet of them as they devoured an impala.

This was an incredibly rare sight. The guide who originally found them located them by chance because he heard the lions fighting over their freshly-killed prey and the crunching of bones. We found lions eating in two separate groups, all within 50-100 yards of one another. The first group had one male, two females, and two lion cubs. The second group had one male lion and 2-3 lionesses. We later heard that these two adult males travel together. The park rangers believe that they are brothers.

One of the female lions in the first group with her cubs and an impala leg.

This male lion was eating alone in a separate location. He appeared to have a young impala all to himself. As we sat and watched him, a lioness came out of the darkness behind our vehicle and moved quietly away.