Entabeni Safari

Went went on an overnight safari to the Entabeni Safari Conservancy about an hour and a half away from Polokwane. We stayed at the Wildside Safari Lodge ... which is a "luxury" tented camp. They were so nice. When we arrived we were greeted by our ranger, James. Then they served us a nice cold sprite and checked us in. James walked us to our tents and told us about the plans for the day. Here are the pictures from this weekend.

Luke was so excited to go. On Friday night I told him to pack for the trip and later when I checked on him I found that he had packed more than enough! Funny he had a little of everything in that bag.

James, our ranger is showing us to our tents. He explained to us that during the day it is OK to go back and forth by ourselves but we needed to be careful. At night we were told we must be escorted to our tents by a ranger (who has a rifle). We are in the bush and there are animals who roam freely - there are no fences. We were told to stay in our tents during the night and if for any reason we needed to leave we must call for an escort.

This is the tent Mark and I stayed in. It had 2 twin beds and a nice bathroom. Although I must admit Grams and the kids had the better bathroom ...

This is the tent that Grams, Brit and Luke stayed in. It had a double bed plus 2 twin beds and the bathroom had a tub and an outdoor shower. Very nice.

This was the view from their porch.

This is the pool for that lodge. Luke is busy making plans to swim after lunch.

We had a very nice buffet lunch. Several salads and cheeses as well as rice, potatoes, veggies, fish and steak kabobs, fruit and pudding for dessert.

Luke swimming after lunch.

Mark is taking a much deserved nap after a long 2 weeks of school!

We are getting ready to head out on our safari Saturday evening. James asked if anyone wanted to ride up front and Luke quickly jumped at the chance!


James is our ranger for the weekend.

James heard on the radio that another ranger just found some lions. He said that we actually just drove right past them. They were laying down in the bush and we couldn't see them. He turned around and went back to that area and drove off the road into the grass. We spotted them and we were able to park the vehicle right next to where they were. We were about 5 - 6 yards away from the male and the female and her 2 cubs were on the other side of the vehicle. We couldn't get any good pictures of them because they were laying down the whole time and you could see their tales every now and then.

We drove across a small dam and we came across 3 white rhino's. We were between 5 to 10 yards from them at any given time.

African Sunset

Full Moon

Here we are taking a break for "sun downers" to watch the sunset. Everyone had chips and a drink of their choice.

Luke was busy learning about animal tracks during our "sun downers"

Man there is nothing like a full moon in the bush of Africa.

As we were heading to dinner it got dark and James used his spot light to see if we could see anything. We ended up behind a lioness and 2 cubs walking down the road. We could see the lion ahead of them about 50 yards. We ended up being about an hour late for dinner as they stayed on the road for about 45 minutes and we could not pass them.

We had dinner under a HUGE fig tree. They set up tables and had a buffet with lots of food. It was an incredible experience. James told us on Sunday morning that the lion tracks were spotted as people were leaving the area just on the other side of where we were parked. Crazy to think they were that close.


We woke up at 5 am on Sunday for our 6 am morning safari.

Sunrise on Sunday morning

This group of zebras had several babies.

Wildebeest

After we checked out and loaded up to head home we decided to stop at the Conservation area to look at the white lions. It was so neat to see them and to hear the history behind the white lion. The white lions are very rare. Here is the short story ... This conservation area has several of these white lions that they have raised and they are now in the process of breeding them with brown lions and then they will allow those cubs to be raised "in the wild" although they are on an island in the conservatory. These new cubs will most likely be brown but will carry the white gene and then they can breed those cubs and they should be white. In time they will be able to introduce several white lions into the game park. There is a movie that just came out here in South Africa called "The White Lion" we are headed to see this on Tuesday. They are beautiful!

We came home this afternoon and Grams spotted this bird in our yard. We have lots of these each day that "hang out" in our yard.

We are so thankful for the blessing of having Grams here with us and the gift we were given this weekend with her in the game park. Great Memories for sure!!!

*If you want to see pictures of the bore hole check out the previous post - keep in mind they were posted late Friday night and blogspot was causing me problems or I guess it could have been just user error. Anyway they are on there and that is all that matters :)