Mala Mala is just about the best place for wildlife photography. This time we got lucky, upgrade to Rattrays, which is very, very nice ! Plus we got to drive with my favourite ranger, and because there were so few people around we even got a private jeep. Nothing can keep me in camp now, however nice it is !

 

Finding the Big 5 is not an easy thing to do. Unless you come here ! Usually by day 2 you will have found them. Same for us, within 2 game drives we saw them all.

 

A big male lion roaring away at incredible decibels, contact calling his family ( the cubs !)

A lovely leopard posing for us under a tree in a field of yellow flowers.

We saw elephants on a daily base. One weird experience was an elephant mum with calf, the poor elephant was missing the last third of her trunk, probably from a snare. She now had to kneel down to drink, or bend down to suck up water, and then squirt it into her mouth. She sounded somewhat like my dishwasher when pumping out the last bits of water. Pieter tells us the herd doesn’t want her around, too much noise ! Poor junior, always just him and mum, he will have major problems socialising when he grows up….

We saw single old buffalos, but the best sighting was when a herd of about 200 came to drink at a waterhole of about 20m2, as you can imagine, they filled it, it was hard to see which body part belonged to which buffalo, there were so many and they were all so close together.

We were even lucky enough to see a rhino with tiny calf, they were very skittish and ran off into the bush. Good for them, keep your baby safe rhino mum, and stay away from us humans.

But honestly, when they ask me what I would like to see most my default answer is : lion cubs, as small as possible, and at play if you could organise that…. I really would love to see them !

Somehow every time I visit, the cubs are there but we can’t find them. One time I spent 5 days looking for them, my flight left at 2pm, and you’ve guessed it…the next morning game drive they found 5 tiny cubs, I missed them by 17 hours ! Other times it was 1 or 2 days, they just moved their den site, or moved over the boundary and only returned after I left. I didn’t give up, my patience and endurance was at last rewarded !

 

This time I was lucky, and the cubs were even cuter than expected, so if they ask me next time….

my default answer will stay as it is, cubs are just the best !

copyright photo & text by Astrid Bluemel for bluemelphoto.ch