Site inspection

Now the key to getting new new guests into the lodge is to look after the agents that will be sending the guests in the first place. These are what we call site inspections and are of the utmost importance to ensure that we remain at the top of the game. At Little Bush Camp we don't get too many of these but yesterday was one of those times. The other thing about site inspections is that they normally only stay for a night so we really have to pull the rabbit out of the hat to sell the lodge. 

With a massive storm on the way we set off to impress the ladies and keep a big smile on the faces of Peter and Ornella. Our goal was to find the lions from the morning as we had a pretty good idea where they were. It turned out that the lions had headed off on the hunt and had already crossed over to the northern section of the reserve. After closing off the block into which their track had led myself and Brett headed into the bush on foot to find the lionesses. We hadn't walked 200 metres before finding them just other side of the drainage line. That meant that we had successfully tracked the lions twice that day. This is a great achievement by any standards and the guests were all overwhelmed by our success.

When we got to the lions with the vehicle we could see that they had caught and eaten something already and were now doing some well earned digesting. We left the ladies and headed back towards the lodge as the rain had started and I didnt want to be too far away in case the guests called it quits or the lightening forced us to go back. Along the way we bumped into a herd of elephants, one of which decided to have a mud bath in the puddle five metres in from of the vehicle and poor Solly ended up having just as much of a bath as the elephant. Fortunately he was wearing a poncho but this left us all having a good chuckle...

Brett then found the little bush female with a kill and when we got there she was highly agitated. This is not uncommon for her as she can be temperamental at the best of times. She gave a half charge as we approached before climbing into the tree with her kill, bearing her teeth at us and hissing. Unfortunately due to the rain I had left my camera at home and missed a great photo opportunity. A rhino had also waddled into the l oc and this just topped a ridiculous afternoon with the big game. We decided to call it quits after leaving the rhino and head back to have a shower and warm up.

This morning got off to early start and we hit the road at 5.30 as the guests were all leaving early to get back home. Our first order of business was to go see what was happening with the Little Bush Female. We were not the only curious eyes there as we joined two hyena that were hoping for some scraps. Little bush was perched on one of the low lying branches and was posing...this does not happen often!!! She also had her six month old cub in the tree and this was only my second time to see her. The first was nearly five months ago when she was still tiny. We didnt get the best view of her but I did manage to get one good facial shot which will be sent to the guys doing the leopard genealogy of the Sabi Sands.

The rest oft the morning was filled with rhinos, zebra, kudu, impala and duiker as well as looking at some of the smaller stuff. Definitely a crammed 2 drives with amazing sightings that will hopefully bring us lots of business in the future.