We woke up at sunrise.

I had apparently slept through the hyenas calling, and neither of us heard the lions. We took some photos of the hide, Brian made himself some coffee, and we sat in the swing chairs watching a couple of hippos return home to the dam. It was great.

Soon Phanuel arrived to whisk us away on our morning game drive. I was sad to leave the hide, but anxious to see what Timbavati had in store for us today, our last full day in the reserve,

Phanuel had seen some rhinos on his way over to fetch us, so we went back to look at them. All of the rhinos we have seen have been white rhinos. The reserve does have a few black rhinos, but they are hard to find. I didn’t mind, I was just happy to see any kind of rhino. As a child we would always see loads of rhinos on our game drives, but there has been a long period of time when we never saw any. Fortunately with the current anti-poaching schemes in place, their numbers are increasing. Nowadays, in the game reserves we have visited you are almost guaranteed to see white rhinos. That is such a wonderful thing. Sure, they are still endangered and at extreme risk from poachers, but their numbers are growing. Yay!

After watching the rhinos, we drove off in search of lions. We eventually found them. They were quite hidden, lying in the bushes. To get a good view we did a fair amount of bundu bashing, with our tracker giving advice about what bushes we should avoid driving over. Luckily one gave us a look, but the others continued with their nap.

On our way back to the lodge for lunch we encountered an elephant with beautiful long tusks. You used to see big tuskers on game drives, but with rampant poaching, their numbers have decreased significantly. This elephant certainly didn’t have tusks that compared to the tuskers from the 60s, but he certainly was a beauty.

We have seen a lot of warthogs on our game drives, but they have been difficult to photograph because as soon as they see us, they put their tails up and disappear into the bushes. This warthog was different, and stopped to look at us. So we finally obtained a good photo of a warthog.

We also saw a couple of jackals, giraffes, and zebra, and a lilac breasted roller that stayed still long enough for Brian to take a photo.

After lunch Phanuel told us he had heard that there was a leopard in the area, so we set off in the vehicle to see if we could find her. On our way we came across a sleeping lion.

Despite following tracks on the road, and trying to follow them into the bush, the leopard remained elusive, so after a long time we decided to end our search, and go and check on some other lions in the area.

We found the lionesses sleeping under a tree, and the males checking things out in the open. A herd of impalas ran by in the distance. The lions looked vaguely interested, got up and walked briefly in the direction of the impalas, but then settled down again.

It was time for sundowners, so we left them in peace, and headed off to find a good spot for our last sundowners in Africa for this trip.

We started packing and then went to the main lodge for dinner. We were about to join the rest of the guests at the long table in the dry riverbed in front of the lodge, but the manager whisked us away to our own little private oil lamp lit table in the cabana by the pool.

It was so lovely, here we were on our last night in the bush, having a romantic dinner for two away from the noise of the other guests. It was the perfect way to spend the evening here. I love that the camp staff had really understood how much we love to just be alone, the 2 of us and nature. It was making it very difficult to leave.