Idube

We spent the past four days at a lodge in the Sabi Sands game preserve called Idube Lodge.

Idube means Zebra in the local african language called Shangaan.

It was an amazing experience. 

We got to see an wide variety of african animals living in the wild, hunting, killing, sleeping, bathing, and a lot more.

It is something I would recommend to every family that can swing a trip like this at least once before the kids grow up and start families of their own.

We saw lions, leopards, cheetahs, monkeys, elephants, rhinos, hippos, buffalos,giraffes, and a lot more. 

We took a ton of pictures that I won’t subject you all to, but here are a few of the highlights.

We flew into a tiny landing strip in the middle of the game preserve.

All the lodges have these big Land Rovers that can drive over almost anything you can imagine.  We drove over small trees while we were tracking lions and leopards.

Each Land Rover is driven by a Ranger and a Tracker sits on the front bumper.  These guys have been working in the bush for a long time.  And the animal they seem to have the most interest in is the Leopard.  I gained a lot of respect for these animals.  They hunt and kill with a vengeance that is only topped by lions.  But they are active compared to lions who are fairly lazy and Leopards spend a lot of time in the trees where I liked seeing them.

The best sighting, the "jackpot" as Jessica called it, was finding and tracking a pride of lions that included over ten lion cubs.

There was one large male lion, with three females, and a bunch of cubs.  The kids thought they were so "cute" but seeing the male lion was a reminder that they won’t be cute for long.

My favorite animal was the Cheetah.  It is a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but its legs are really long and they fly when they run.

We saw these two cubs with their mom on the second day there.

We had visited some elephants in Knysna, but seeing them in the wild was a different deal.  They are huge and when they start walking toward the Land Rover, the earth starts to move and its a scary moment.

We were never in any danger, but part of the thrill of the safari is the realization that these animals are dangerous and you quickly gain a healthy respect for them.