The beauty of being a shareholder at Limpopo-Lipadi is that you can do self-drives—after having received proper 4×4 driving and first aid training and passing the exams, of course. And so it was on a glorious morning that we decided to set up camp (doubling as breakfast) in one of the hides in the reserve.
We had had a slow few days where animal sightings were concerned, and we were starting to wonder where the heck all the wildlife had gone. It didn’t take long (we’d only just opened the thermos for coffee) for a parade to unfold before our very eyes. Enter droves of impala, followed by kudu, sided by eland. There came the baboons, a bush pig, a single rhino and an elephant at the same time, plus some giraffes.
You’d think that that would be enough excitement for one day, but preceded by a cloud of dust an enormous herd of zebra dropped by — we counted about 55, who started to drink and play in the water. What a spectacle – we almost forgot to have breakfast!
Completely reassured, we returned to the lodge. The animals were all but gone. And it was a smart move not to try and locate them (in vain), but to patiently wait for them to come to us instead.