After picking our jaws up off the floor at the sheer size of our villa, we left to do our first game drive at Mala Mala.
Here is a map of Mala Mala Game Reserve. As you can see on the map, Mala Mala Game Reserve is right next to Kruger National Park. We are at Rattray’s Camp – haha! – “camp” is funny for this place. 🙃 All the grey blocks are other game reserves. There are a lot around Kruger. The great thing is that none of them have fences, including Kruger National Park. So of course, the animals don’t know where the reserve boundaries are. They just go where they want to go, which is awesome for them – and for those of us who want to see them.
So here we go! And, of course, Rattray’s has a big stone entrance. This picture Jeff took caught the sun just right as we were leaving.
On the other side of the entrance, the road stretches out in front of us…
It wasn’t long before we saw wildlife. There were a few giraffes munching on the trees.
One of them took off at a good trot. It was cool to see a giraffe running.
Soon after the giraffes, we saw a new animal – a waterbuck. They have what looks like white targets on their behinds. This is a female.
We saw our one and only hippo of the trip today. Well, we barely saw it! This is the best we could do…
Of course, we saw impala…
Oh, wow, I got some great photos of Burchell’s starlings! They are always flying around, but not usually this close. Their colors are vibrant blues and purples. Just stunning! Luckily, the light was perfect for showing off the colors.
Next, we saw a white rhino. Do you know the story of why the white rhino is called white? The story says that early English settlers mistook the Dutch or Afrikaans word “wijd” (also spelled wyd, weit, or wyt), which means “wide.” This refers to the animal’s square-shaped upper lip, which is different from the black rhino’s pointed lip. Supposedly, they thought they were saying “white”. However, this is just one story. There are other stories, but this is the one that sticks, even though no one really knows if it’s true. And, of course, they now call the other rhino the black rhino. Not because it’s black, but to say it’s the opposite of the white rhino. LOL!
The setting sun cast a nice warm glow over him as he grazed…
Next, we started tracking a leopard. Mala Mala is one of the best places anywhere to see leopards – and I mean a LOT of leopards. Usually, they are the hardest cat to find. But in Mala Mala, they are everywhere and just don’t care about the vehicles.
So here, Jacques is about to start off into the scrub. Who needs a road?
Sure enough, he found a male leopard. So beautiful!
He was on a mission to mark the territory and go… well, we didn’t know where at first. But you’ll see. Here he is marking this bush. We didn’t take pictures of him spraying, yuck, but he was doing that, too.
See how they just ignore the trucks? He didn’t even look at us.
Here he posed for a really nice photo…
Aha! We now know where he was going! He was heading to this female leopard. She was ready to mate. He sat and watched her roll all over the ground. Here she is in action…
She moved off a bit into the grass.
The problem for our male is that there was already another male leopard hanging around. This is him on the right side of this photo.
In the end, the female headed off into the brush and the males followed her. We decided to leave them alone to do their thing.
By now, the sun had set. We started driving back to the lodge for dinner – but stumbled upon a pride of lions lazing around in the deep grass. There were at least 10 lions, but they were really difficult to see in the tall grass and darkness.
Another truck appeared, and they pointed their spotlight on the lions. This young male was grooming the lioness next to him, but then he stretched a bit.
One of the other young males got up and I was surprised how large he was. His body is already so big and muscular, and he has a way to go before he is fully grown.
By this time, it was getting too hard to see anything unless we used a spotlight. So, we decided to head back for dinner.
We were super tired from the long travel day, so we decided to eat in our room. No problem, they brought dinner to us. My meal was eland, which is a type of antelope.
I can’t remember what Jeff’s meal was.
Everything was delicious. After dinner, we crashed.