9/15- today is our last day at Mateya. We decide to do a short morning game drive. Nothing too exciting happens, just a bunch of elephants, Impala, zebra, and the other usuals. We drive in some really pretty areas though that we haven't been in yet. We go back to the lodge for breakfast around 9:00 and then pack up and head to the airstrip. Our airplane comes for us at 10:45. We have to fly to Johannesburg to catch another flight to the next lodge. We are on a very small plane with about six other people and the lady behind us is apparently very nervous. It's a pretty bumpy flight on take off and landing and she keeps screaming and gasping. I wish I had some earplugs! Our next flight is also a very small plane with about eight other people and it is about a 1 1/2 hour flight. There is a pilot and copilot and Larry and I are sitting right behind them. We both happen to notice that they are reading from laminated sheets that tell them what to do. It appears that they are not too familiar with this plane. Larry swears that they didn't know how to take off and were reading instructions while we were sitting on the runway. I agree that the copilot looked completely confused but was hoping the pilot knew what he was doing. We landed on a very rough gravel airstrip and one of the passengers even asked the pilot if we had landed in someone's back yard. Our guide, Rudi, was there to pick us up. It was about 10 minutes to Royal Malewane Lodge. Again we get the introduction and are brought to our suite where we meet our butler, our cook, and our housekeeper. The suite is every bit as nice as our house. It has a gorgeous living room, dining room and kitchen. The bedroom is beautiful and the bathroom is even bigger than ours at home ( I know...the bathroom again). We have a huge outdoor deck with a dining area, two lounge areas, a swimming pool and a hot tub. It looks out onto the reserve and there are already elephants and nyala right off our deck. We will have all of our meals here in our suite, which is really more like a house, cooked by our personal chef in our kitchen. The butler is ours full time and will tend to our every need. They cook us lunch and we eat outside on our deck and then get ready to go on our first game drive. Rudi comes to pick us up and we meet our tracker also. The first thing we see is a group of elephants playing in a mud hole. We've seen 100's of elephants and we've never seen this. They splash the mud all over themselves with their trunks, kick in the mud and two of them were rolling around in it. They were having a blast. We then saw some lazy buffalo resting by a water hole and then a mom and two week old baby rhino. The baby was one of the cutest things ever. He was still trying to get his balance and was a little wobbly. He was very playful and would kind of bounce around and pick up things off the ground, including elephant dung. We saw lots of other animals and then came back to our suite. Mbuso, our butler was waiting for us with a mojito. We changed for dinner and then sat by the fire that he had made for us in the living room and had a glass of wine. Then came a six course dinner. It was very good. We are not going to want to leave this place. 

9/16- Rudi woke us up at 5:30 and our butler was already in the kitchen making us coffee and breakfast. Rudi and Solly showed up at about 6:15 and we set out on safari. We drove a while and saw all the usual suspects and then came to a water hole with hippos and crocodiles. We stayed there and had some coffee and snacks and then drove to where there was a report of a leopard kill in a tree. We found the bushbok in a tree but couldn't find the leopard which was no doubt under some bushes somewhere nearby watching us. We saw 4 or 5 of the largest giraffes we have ever seen. There are also some male bull elephants that are just enormous. We get back to our suite where Gift and Mbuso have prepared a breakfast that could feed about twenty people. I asked them if we were expecting others! We sat outside and ate and a group of about 15 elephants passed right by us while one of them stopped and drank out of our pool. There were also lots of nyala all around including a very small baby. We watched as its mother was licking it and cleaning its ears. After lunch we went to the spa and got massages and when we were done there were nyalas looking in the window. Our afternoon game drive started out with a huge herd of buffalo around a watering hole. Several of them were very curious about us and came close to check us out. Then we found a leopard that was eating the final remains of an impala kill. We got very close and could hear the crunching of bones as she cleaned the carcass. Next up was a pride of lions, eight of them, that had a buffalo kill. Most had been eating for awhile and were fat and tired. A few of them took turns eating and then would join the others resting with full bellies. We were about 10-12 feet away from the whole thing. It smelled pretty bad and there were a lot of flies. There were also about 25 or so vultures in the trees just waiting their turn. A few brave vultures came down on the ground but the lions were quick to chase them away. We were almost back to the lodge when we saw a bunch of lights. It turns out that's where we were going and it was actually lanterns burning and some small fires burning. Mbuso, Gift and about a dozen other staff members were there to greet us. They had set up an amazing dinner for us in the bush. They served us champagne and then entertained us with their local village singing and dancing. They even got us to dance with them. Rudi stayed and had dinner with us. It was a huge amount of food. Prawn appetizer, soup, a main course of chicken, lamb, and kudu and then a dessert that I'm not sure what it was but it tasted really good. When we were done Rudi drove us back to the lodge and we felt like the lions...fat and tired. 

9/17- the lions were very active this morning. There were nine lions on the buffalo kill and they must have been busy eating through the night because there wasn't much left of it. There was a lot of snarling and growling going on as they all tried to eat at the same time. We sat quietly about twenty feet away and watched and listened for quite some time. We moved on and saw giraffe and buffalo and nyala and monkeys and then found another group of three lions. A male and two females. The male was huge and had a beautiful mane. The females were large too. This was the most beautiful group of lions we have seen so far. They were very relaxed and seemed almost as if they were posing for us. They heard some noises off in the distance and got up to investigate. We decided to follow them. At one point we got in between the male and two females and he had to walk right at us and within about two feet of us to get by. It was a gorgeous sighting. We went to the spa again between our morning and afternoon game drives. It's rough here! When we got back from the spa there were about 10 monkeys on our patio. They had gotten into everything. They knocked over a vase of flowers, uprooted a potted plant on a table and were eating it, two of them were sitting on some large pots staring at their reflections in the mirror, one of them was opening the pages of a book on the coffee table. They are so much fun to watch but would probably drive me crazy if I lived here. On our afternoon game drive we went to find a leopard and her two cubs that had been tracked earlier in the day. It was a pretty rough drive through some very dense brush. On the first pass through we didn't see them so Rudi and Solly got out and walked around. They came back (luckily) and said they didn't see her but they heard her growling at them. They knew about where she was so we drove off in that direction through some stuff that didn't seem possible to drive through. Solly was up front in his tracker seat and had to pull out his machete many times to hack off some branches and even some larger limbs of trees so we could get by. We finally saw some movement and got to them. One of the cubs was feeding on a kill, the other was resting right near where we drove in and the mom was a short distance away just monitoring things. The cub with the kill decided to drag it closer to her brother but she got it stuck around some tree limbs. It was hilarious to watch her trying to figure out how to get it unstuck. She finally gave up. We watched for about 30 minutes and decided we should go see some other things. The problem was we couldn't get out. We had come through some really thick brush, even driving over small trees, down a hill and in a very tight space with a culvert in front of us. Rudi tried to back up but couldn't get through the trees. He tried to pull forward a little and turn around but there wasn't enough space. It took us a long time and a lot of backwards and forwards and a lot of thorny bushes that we had to duck out of the way of but we finally made it out. Solly admitted later that he didn't think we were going to get out. We saw some giraffe and buffalo and then stopped for some wine next to a huge termite mound to watch the sunset. We had a leisurely drive back to the lodge where Mbuso had margaritas waiting for us. Our dinner was in the boma where Gift had prepared a traditional African dinner of oxtail, spareribs, sausages, corn, and several other things that I'm not familiar with. It was all very good. I'm really sad that this is our last night in the bush. 

9/18- we had our final game drive this morning. I won't miss waking up at 5:30 am but I will miss the safaris. The animals and the people that we have met along the way have been so special. For our final safari was saw eight lions all resting and relaxing together, then we saw two leopard cubs. One of the cubs was trying out his skills at hunting. There were some nyala not far away and he was stalking them. He wasn't successful though as he got spotted and one of the nyala started her warning call. They really weren't even afraid though because apparently they know he was a young leopard and doesn't really have a chance of doing any damage. It was fun to watch anyway. We came across a large herd of buffalo, about 150 or so, and made our way right into the middle of the herd. It was like we were one of them. It was another one of those very special experiences. We came back to the lodge and had another great breakfast cooked by Gift. We packed and showered and then had about two hours to relax and visit with Mbuso before we had to leave for our plane. Rudi and Solly came and got us to drive us to the airstrip. It is only about five minutes away but on the way there we saw buffalo, three rhinos, a waterbuck (the first one we have ever seen), Impala, nyala, and banded mongoose. It was so hard to say goodbye. We had to take a small plane to Nelspruit where we got on a bigger plane (but still pretty small) to go to Cape Town. 

Notes of things I forget to write in my daily log:

Mosquitoes- we never saw any until we got to Kruger (Royal Malewane). Even there they weren't bad at all, only a few and we never got bit. Probably didn't need the anti-malaria drugs but I guess it's better to be safe. 

We went to four different camps/lodges and each was very different yet also very similar. The schedules are all the same. Up at 5:30, out on game drive at 6:15-6:30, back for brunch/lunch at around 11:30, siesta until 3:30, high tea at 3:30, afternoon game drive from 4:00-7:00 ish, dinner at 7:30 or 8:00. Botswana guides are not allowed to have guns and do not work with trackers. They do their own tracking and most of them were born in the area so have grown up dealing with the wild animals from a very young age. Botswana has a very strict no shooting/killing law and hunting is not allowed in the whole country. South Africa guides carry rifles and work with trackers. There are hunting lodges which are separate from the game reserve areas. The guides go through a lot of training to learn how to track and identify animals, birds, plants, etc. I have to say that I think I actually felt safer with the Botswana guides even though they didn't have guns. They have a better instinct for the behavior of these animals. The South Africa guides were very good but I didn't feel they had the same instinct. That being said, they are all a bit crazy and risk their lives on a daily basis just to get close to these animals. 

The food is fantastic but there is way too much of it. 

The rooms are very luxurious. Botswana "camps" do not have fixed walls but just screen between you and the outdoors. All camps are built on platforms so the animals can roam beneath them. This is not camping though, not even close. These are some of the nicest accommodations we have ever stayed in. South Africa "lodges" all have fixed walls and are not open to the outdoors. They are definitely even more luxurious than Botswana which is ridiculous. All of the places we stayed had huge outdoor decks with lots of furniture and in South Africa we had our own private swimming pools. 

We loved all four of our guides although each of them was very different. 

MD was the craziest boat driver ever but was fairly calm on land. He drove like a kamikaze through a channel that was half the width of the boat and only about 6 inches deep in places. All of that while weaving around corners and dodging elephants, buffalo, hippos and numerous birds that just tried to get out of his way. 

Cisco would get us into the tightest spots so we could get the best views of all of the wildlife. He would be driving along calmly when he would see something way off in the distance and he would floor it over very rough terrain just to see if we could find whatever it was in the distance. 

Kenneth was just certifiably crazy! I learned more from him than any of the other guides. He was so knowledgeable about the animals, birds, plants, tracks, and anything that had to do with the African bush. He could do the most amazing bird calls that would get dozens of birds to come flying in and even communicating back to him. He was fearless and would get us into some questionable situations. 

Rudi was very laid back but would go to any length to get us that special sighting. Also crazy, he would leave the vehicle without his gun to go and track lions or leopards. He's had a few close calls but it hasn't stopped him from continuing to put himself in some pretty dangerous situations. 

I really miss them all. 

The sunrise and sunset in Africa is the most amazing I have ever seen. Both are bright red.