Paul Goldberg Blog

The Big Five

In African big game hunting the five most dangerous and difficult animals to hunt are are Cape Buffalo, Elephant, Rhinoceros, Lion and Leopard. For the photo safari enthusiast these are also the favorites to look for. If you are in African wildlife reserves it is reasonably easy to see the herbivores. Lions are also plentiful and relatively lazy so they can be seen resting or on the move. In our, albeit limit, experience the Leopard may be the most difficult to get a sighting of. Four years ago in Tanzania the only sighting we had of a leopard was sleeping in a tree way off on the distance with its kill.

In our game drives at Thornybush Reserve we saw all of the big five in our first two game drives. The picture of the Leopard I posted a couple of days ago was taken in the first couple of hours of our first drive. In the course of six game drives we have had the great joy to see all of these animals repeatedly. This morning during our game drive shortened to 2 hours to get us to our plane later in the morning, we first went looking for lions which we had heard calling during our wake up calls. Eventually we saw this lioness moving steadily through the brush

She crossed the road right in front of our truck

 and paused before resuming her trek to catch up with her pride.

As the lioness continued into the brush we relinquished our position in the viewing group (no more than two trucks at a time) and set out in search of leopards to cap the drive. First Dan and John (Ranger/Drive and Tracker) found markings of a leopard dragging a kill. Leaving us on the truck they set off to locate the animal and see if we could get into position in the truck. Eventually they returned and told us they had indeed located it, but there was no way to get the truck in position and without a rifle they could not lead us in on foot. They then heard reports of leopards being heard calling and determined they would chase down the lead. What we found was a female attempting to drive off a male from the den where her cubs were. There was plenty of noise and although we saw both cats, this was the only useful picture I could get.

The Waterside Lodge in Thornybush is an amazing place, made that way in large measure by wonderful staff, lead by Liam and his wife, dedicated to making the experience wonderful. The food was excellent, the accommodations superb and the sense of being in Africa was enhanced by a relatively open campus with all kinds of animals drifting through. On our first night, as I may have mentioned, we had to detour around a Hippo while walking from the dining area to our cabin. Each night the dinner was set in a different area of the grounds. The last night was in a Booma, a round area surrounded by upright stakes to keep out animals, wind other people with a sand floor. The barbecue was great and we had a fine time. I would recommend that anyone planning a trip to the Kruger area of South Africa ought to consider Waterside Lodge in Thornybush as a must stop. If you can only take three days for Safari this is the place. Our tracking team were wonderful and they poured a mean Gin and Tonic in the bush during the Sun Downers (not the kind we experience with people with dementia).
We are at an airport hotel near Johannesburg and the connection is good so far. Tomorrow Botswana.