16th – Wet cats

Today we were relocated from Muluwa to Chisomo Safari Lodge at Karongwe Private Game Reserve. As we weren’t supposed to be there until lunch and the drive was only 3-ish hours it gave us a late start in the morning. Our bags were picked up from our tents at 0800 and after breakfast we left, slightly delayed.

The drive was uneventful and arriving at our new lodge we were welcomed with a small drink and a moist hot towel before being handed our keys. It must be coincidence but the lodge in Johannesburg gave me room 6, Muluwa lodge had me in tent 6 and here I have tent C… 6.

Uuhmm... Excuse me? I believe there is an elephant in my tent...

Lunch was had and at 1445 we had tea and biscuits with a presentation of a wildlife preservation group with a focus on what they did for the cheetah population in sub-Saharan Africa.

An hour later we were off on the first of our 4 game drives here. We had a driver/guide (obviously…) and a tracker sitting on a small seat on the front of the bonnet. I have no idea how he managed to hold onto that small seat when driving, but my guess is dark magic. It was raining and being in a completely open vehicle (i.e. like the ones in Kruger, but without a roof) we were completely exposed so ponchos were handed out. While driving around we had an amazing view of constant lightning but despite struggling with the increasing amounts of rain we still got to see a group of female lions drinking at a small lake and a male hiding underneath a bush, not handling the thunder and lightning very well. At this point the weather had gotten so bad that our driver raced us to cover – the drive took 10-15 minutes and it was a struggle holding on, shielding the cameras from the rain and still seeing anything at all with the rain pounding into our faces.

Lionesses.

Male lion not too happy about the current weather situation.

Being in cover we had a short break with drinks and snacks that had been brought along and soon after the rain stopped, we wrapped everything up and got our fully soaked selves back up onto the fully soaked seats and continued on.

Unfortunately we didn’t really see anything on second leg of this drive and around 1900 we returned to our lodge. We got ourselves into dry clothes (and most of us had a nice hot shower) before coming back for dinner.

Sunset on the drive.

Tomorrow we’ll get up at 0500 and leave on a morning drive half an hour later for app. 3 hours before returning for breakfast. After that we’ll have relaxation time before tea at 1500 and an afternoon drive like today until around 1900. While some seem to be planning on spending time in the pool or spa (!) during the downtime I expect to sit in the bird blind by the nearby lake and see if anything interesting will come by.