CKGR Game Drives

The one good thing about camping versus being at one of the camps is that you can stay out all day on game drives. If you are at one of the camps you go out in the morning for about 3 hours and then out again for 3 hours after hi tea. I wish I could have the luxury of the camps along with the long game drives. We went out for a few hours the day we got to the reserve. We didn't see any predators. We did see a lot of gembok, springbok and birds. The next day we stayed out for about 10 hours. When we diecided to head back we came across a lion. You aren't supposed to go off road but we did. The young male lion was standing and when we got close he laid down under a tree. he kept looking off to the distance so Dennis decide to go find what he was looking at. We found a female lion, she was very shy. She was hiding in the long grass with a gemsbok carcass right in front of her in a ditch. She wouldn't come out for us to take a picture so we went back to the male. We stayed with him for awhile and he got up and started walking toward another tree where we found his brother. he was shy also. The lions of the kalahari really don't like people getting close to them.

There was a storm in the distance and it was getting closer so we headed off. We were still 1.5 hours from camp. There was thunder and lightning and we did get rained on a bit. There were so many Kori Bustards there. If you want to see one that is the place to go. We also saw Secretarybirds,a bunch ofGowshawks, wildebeest, Bat-eared Foxes, Black-backed Jackals, Kudu, Elephants and many birds. When we got back to camp, Dennis went to the front gate to ask themsomething and he came runningback saying there was a big male lion at the gate and to jump in the truck. We all got in and he was the most beautiful lion I have ever seen. He had a full dark mane as the Kalahari lions have. he ended up running back into the bush so we wnet back to camp. The rangers watched for him and ended up following him in there truck to make sure he didn't stay around. He ended up walking right by our camp. We could hear him calling about 1/2 hour later. It was spectacular. I also heard a bunch of hyena that night making all kinds of noise. Camping isn't my thing but we had a great time.