MALA MALA : a photographers paradise

Mala Mala is a private game reserve in the Sabi Sand, bordering the Krueger Park in South Africa. I am a little prejudiced after three trips in 15 months, but I believe it is one of the best game parks in South Africa, if not the best, especially if you are into photography. I truly love to be here ! This place oozes old style British colonial charm, it is the old Africa, as I remember it from my youth in Kenya, and the wildlife sightings are phenomenal. I don’t know if our ranger Joe was so good, or if we were so lucky, probably a bit of both, but we have never had so many absolutely fantastic sightings, seen so many cubs and pups and young animals as we did this time. Maybe the champagne we started to drink at breakfast ( for good luck ) did work after all !

You can still see it was an old hunting lodge

The buffalo lounge where we meet before dinner

Our bedroom with adjoining living room and his&hers bathrooms

Our first game drive started with a beautiful eagle, followed by a tiny elephant, this little one was so small it could easily walk under mums belly. It stumbled along, bumped into its mothers legs, tried to somehow use its trunk. We sat and watched for the longest time, totally adorable !

In the last light, after a hard-core off-road drive, we even found a leopard, and shortly after that another one with one of her one year old cubs. Joe was totally surprised at how cool we behaved after and during the somewhat crazy driving, we ducked, bumped and hung on. People who have visited here will know what I’m talking about….

From here on things get better and better. Our jeep mates, the Manilla girls and the Australian honeymoners, are totally cool, we have great conversations and I have never laughed so much during and after game drives. The getting up at 05:00 am is absolutely worth the trouble ! We see lions on a daily base, at one point we are so spoiled Joe mentions we’ll ”swing by” the lions before we head on. It seems we just have to say it out loud, and shortly after whatever it was, pops up in front of our jeep. Oh, isn’t that a rhino dung place…, 500m further we see one. Do you think we could see the leopard cub ? Mum and the two cubs haven’t been seen the past week, but on our second day here they are back at the old den site ! We are so lucky, and small animals are just the very best !

The three month old leopard cub was posing for us

The next morning on our way to see the lions Joe suddenly changes course and turns left instead of right. What’s going on ? Usually when these guys suddenly start speeding something really good is coming up. We see cape hunting dog pups, they are playing in the riverbed, race around our jeeps, chase each other around, almost start a war over a bundle of grass. When the parents arrive with meat the action doubles, they all run off, we follow, more off-road racing….cool. From there we visit the leopard cubs again, then cheetahs, more lions and in the afternoon the hyena den. Now adult hyenas are ugly, very ugly. But the young ones….. I honestly considered adopting one. Juerg said it would grow up to be a perfectly big and ugly very dangerous watch-dog, so okay, I resist the urge to get out of the jeep and cuddle one. But honest, of all the young animals we encountered these cubs, pups whatever they are called, are my favourites. They keep coming up to our jeep, look at us from all different angles, head off and come back again. They will steal your heart at first glance, promise !

Staying with them for so long, which was lucky again because all other jeeps were up north with the lions, leopard cubs and cheetahs, we missed our sundowners. Who cares, we’ll have moon-uppers sitting in the jeep at the riverside. We’re the last ones in again, this is getting to be a habit !

This one was my favourite !

After 3 days the Manilla girls left, and us and the Aussies continued. Our lucky strike continued too. We see rhino families, wild dogs at a double kill. They actually take down 2 bushbuck in the middle of the river. The water here is only ankle deep so all the cubs follow in, splash around, run from one kill to the next ( they are only 100m apart ) and start tugging at the carcasses. After that it’s pups playground around our jeep again. One even comes up and smells at Joe’s shoe. He leaves rather suddenly, wonder why.. ? It is by now almost totally dark, but we stay as long as we can. Sorry girls, you so badly wanted to see a kill and just missed two kills by a few hours, you’ll have to come back !

We had to do quite a bit of processing to get this photo right, it was really very dark already when this happened !  On the one rainy morning we had we didn’t see too much. But even then, one of the small five, a leopard tortoise !

Leopard tortoise, one of the small five

Luckily we had the rain ponchos, it was not raining too heavily, but the slight drizzle and wind did bring a temperature drop that even made Sam freeze ! The afternoon we were back to better weather again and watched the lions chew on zebra remains, we followed a leopard on the hunt, and sat quietly in the middle of a grazing buffalo herd.

Enjoying some zebra spare ribs…

Our last evening we had a great dinner in the boma, followed by some hilarious conversation, and after 3 bottles of wine ( that is after the sundowners and the pre-dinner drinks in the bar ) we head for bed. As you can imagine the getting up at 05:00 is rather hard the next morning, but we are all there right on time and everybody is smiling. We have our morning coffee on a Kopje, watch the sun rise over Africa one last time. We see the leopard with the two cubs, tiny elephants and another leopard with a kill, conveniently in a tree quite close to camp so we can stay till 10 minutes before breakfast. One last glas of champagne, lots of hugs and goodbyes, we will return, you can bet on that. And I shouldn’t forget the most important : a big hug and thank you to ranger Joe and the 4 coolest jeep mates ever !

We’ve selected our  favourite photos : Go to gallery

The coolest jeep mates ever !