A very eventful evening!

The other evening on drive, our mission was to find the wild dogs. It was my guests’ last game drive before they headed home and all our attempts to find the dogs had been fruitless. We were also on the look out for elephant herds, as we had only seen bulls and the guests wanted to see breeding herds. Shortly after leaving the lodge we encountered our first breeding herd of elephants as they crossed the road in front of us. Just after the elephants we stopped to view a huge variety of general game including eland, red hartebeest, zebra, impala, wildebeest, giraffe and warthog. All of a sudden all the animals darted off in one direction and started alarm calling like crazy. A few seconds later a lioness popped out of the bushes and ran after them! She wasn’t successful. We continued on and soon we were crossing the beautiful, open, Madikwe plains. In the middle of the plains we stopped to look at a white rhino next to the road. As we watched him, we noticed a whole pride of lions on the edge of the plains feasting on a zebra kill. We carried on because we were on a mission to get to the area the dogs had just been spotted, which was a bit of a distance still to travel. But we were soon brought to a halt because literally around the next corner we came across a massive breeding herd of elephants, (with some really tiny calves) and five white rhinos. After viewing them, we continued on towards the water hole where the dogs were. On the way there we passed 3 more white rhino bulls and another big breeding herd of elephants. Just as we finally approached the wild dog sighting, I heard on the radio that the dogs had been chased away by elephants and were gone!! I decided that we would just go to the waterhole anyway and sit and be patient, maybe the dogs would return. We watched the breeding herd of elephants playing at the water’s edge, they were soon joined by 6 white rhino who all had a good wallow. We were there for at least 45 minutes but sadly no dogs. Then just as the light was fading, we heard trumpeting coming towards the road. The next thing, 16 wild dogs ran onto the road right in front of us, followed by a charging herd of elephants chasing them! What a sighting! On the way home we passed more rhinos and 2 more lionesses! The game drive turned out to be incredibly action packed. Around every corner we encountered something exciting and we saw the dogs!

Posted: Madikwe Safari Lodge by Claire Lacey, Date: 22 January 2010