We had a great time in our 2-1/2 days in Cape Town, but this morning it was time to to leave. Nic, our guide from yesterday, picked us up at 8:30 for the short ride to Cape Town airport, where we caught our two hour flight to Durban, the third largest city in South Africa after Cape Town and Johannesburg. At the airport we were met by our driver, who would take us on the three hour drive to the &Beyond Phinda Mountain Lodge, our destination for the next four days.

One of the things I enjoy most about travel is seeing and learning new things. Our travel agent kept saying that getting to Phinda was “difficult”, and I assumed that the drive would be on poor roads at relatively low speeds. Instead, we traveled about 150 miles, first on a four lane highway and then on a two lane limited access road. The last 20 minutes were on dirt roads, mostly from the entrance to the Preserve to our lodge.

We had to stop for lunch, which killed some time and we ate in the van to not kill more time. With all of that, we got to Phinda just after 4:00pm. The general practice at these safari lodges is to have a morning and an afternoon game drive: the morning drive at ~6:30, the afternoon at ~3:00. In mid-August – which is middle of winter here – this means you’re leaving right around sunrise, and returning just after sunset. Since we were late for the afternoon drive, the lodge manager rushed us through the checkin process and we headed out on an abbreviated afternoon drive.

Our Ranger (guide, driver, etc.) is Darren, and we also have a Tracker named Manga.

Within minutes we saw our first animals: a pair of rhinos, one a juvenile and probably the other its mother. This was quickly followed by a kudu, some zebra, wildebeest, and impala. The light was pretty dim by this time, as it was just minutes before sunset and there are hills all around which block the setting sun.

But the fun wasn’t over. We continued driving around and came across two lions lying together in the grass.

You probably can’t see the second lion in the picture, but they were cuddling. Two big males with big manes.

After waiting for quite a while in hopes that they would move or do something interesting, it was basically too dark to see anymore so we headed back to the lodge for dinner. Along the way Manga used a flashlight to try and find any animals in the brush, but we didn’t see anything.