It took a couple days in transit to get from Victoria Falls and to Inyati Game Lodge, one of the lodges in the private game reserve of Sabi Sands.
First was getting out of Victoria Falls. The check-in at the airport was really slow, as they only had one counter open. We were able to take both the large masks as carry-on without any issue.
We actually got served a hot meal on the 90 minute flight to Johannesburg. I hadn't booked a vegetarian meal for Marissa cause I figured it would just be cheese sandwiches but oh well.
We had no problems getting through immigration. Picked up our bags and found our way to Avis to pick up our cars. Nancy had messed up her reservation and got a stick shift. They only had a van remaining for automatic, so we ended up squishing into our car. Heather and I had booked a compact because we wanted a non-descript car because of concerns over car theft and car jackings, more so in Johannesburg.
Anyways we had trouble with the GPS because it switched to a simulated mode inside the airport, and didn't switch back automatically once we exited the parking lot. So we spent about an hour circling the airport down some small streets before we figured it out.
We hit some construction about 75km from Nelspruit, with only a single lane shared. We waited about 20 minutes at a time for the light to change for our direction.
We reached Jorn's guesthouse in Nelspruit around 10pm. The night watch opened the gate to let us in, and then showed us to our rooms.
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At breakfast we could see the grounds at Jorn's. it was a pretty nice place, if we had had a morning flight it would have been cool to hang out at the bar.
Packed up our stuff into the car and then onto Inyati! It took a while to figure out how to use the Garmin, which seems decades behind Google maps. Marissa became our Garmin expert, and was comparing between the Garmin directions, Google maps which she had printed off at home, and Inyati's directions. We missed a turnoff after getting gas, but other than that things went smoothly. The roads were in great shape, and I was starting to figure out the various road markings and signs. Driving a stick on the right side was pretty easy (the pedals are the same), I didn't stall at all.
We reached our entrance to Sabi Sand Reserve right on schedule. The Garmin kept on trying to take us a different way, so we switched the voice to James because it was less annoying.
Paid the entrance fees for us and the car. The onto Inyati! It was about 10 minutes over dirt roads to reach the lodge. They were well organized, the person greeted us by name and our bags disappeared off to our rooms.
It was hot, about 33C. We had lunch at the main lodge, then went to our rooms to get ready for our first game drive that evening.
At 4pm we met up in the main lodge again for high tea. Met our guide (Omega) and tracker (Rodger). It was the four of us plus a French couple in our safari vehicle.
At 4:30pm we started off on the game drive. It was still a bit hot, we had layers of sunscreen and bug repellent. The two main animals on our checklist here were leopards and wild dogs (this was Marissa's addition to the list).
Almpst immediately we saw our first leopard(s)! It was a mother and son, trotting along. They stopped to drink at a small watering hole, and then the mother led the son to a baby impala she had killed earlier and hid in a tree.
We watched for almost 30 minutes as the son leopard ate the impala. We were very lucky to see this, even the guides were taking pictures.
We left in search of other game, also to give other safari vehicles a chance to view the leopards. The lodges coordinate to limit sightings to two vehicles, so that you don't end up with 10 vehicles looking at a lion like in Kruger.
We saw rhinos, giraffes, elephants, hippos, just to name the bigger ones. The wildlife is very plentiful here.
It was a long game drive, ending around 7:30pm. We were escorted by a guard to our chalets (the animals roam freely through the lodge grounds). At 8:15pm we were picked up to walk back to the main lodge for dinner.
Dinner was served to everyone at the same time, which I guess allows the guests to meet and talk over dinner. I had the kudu for my main, which wasn't as gamey as I had hoped.
We were in bed around 10pm, excited about the game drive, but not looking forward to the 5am wake-up call.
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FYI I've added pics to the Victoria Falls album and the South Africa album. Links are in the right nav bar
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