On the trail of wild dogs – Sabi Sands Game Reserve, South Africa

10 game drives in 5 days (sunrise and sunset); standard for most safari lodges, and in many cases guests opt out of the early morning ones after the first couple of days. We were determined to make each drive; after all we had paid for it, and in any case there wasn’t a great deal to do during the daytime other than putting your feet up and watching the sun drift across the sky.

We stayed at Elephant Plains lodge, which seemed to offer a good level of comfort without the prohibitive prices of other lodges nearby. They collected us from the airport at Nelspruit, and the three hour drive passed through captivating scenery. Small villages full of life, valleys green and lush and people walking busily along the roadside, it was more reminiscent of Uganda than of the South Africa we had just grown accustomed to along the western Cape.

Once in the lodge, the daily routine centred around the game drives. If you are going on a safari with the intention of seeing the big 5, this place takes some beating. We saw three or four of this famed group of large mammals on every drive. Our tracker instinctively knew the whereabouts of a pair of leopards and we would reliably observe them sleeping, climbing and on one occasion feasting. Elephants greeted us on almost every drive, and lions were plentiful too.

The rarest sighting we enjoyed, and even our driver and tracker were excited by this, was a pack of wild dogs. Roaming at pace across vast distances, they are almost impossible to locate predictably, and this was the first sighting in Sabi Sands for eight months. We observed them for ten minutes or so before they moved on. From the reaction of our experts we knew we had been very fortunate to witness these creatures.

Five days was a long time to stay, and I think we ended up outstaying every other guest who we met there. Yet we didn’t regret it, such was our fascination in the amazing sights that greeted us every day. And of course, when the animals weren’t cooperating the landscapes and the amazing skies that we could enjoy were just as memorable.