Day 10 - Sabi Sand to Capetown

An action packed day today, as we take in the morning game drive before driving the 7 hour trek back down to Jo'burg via the "Panoramic Drive." Woke up to another stunning sunrise. Ian had been holding camera-duty for most of the trip, but every now and then he'd hand it over to me to try a shot or two. Here's my attempt at capturing the sunrise...as I mentioned to Ian right after taking it -- looks an awful lot like sunset to me!

The morning drives always seemed a bit more quiet than the afternoon/evening drives (maybe the animals take after Ian) so we weren't expecting a ton of action. However, not long into the drive, we came upon a new leopard: Mbilo, a young female, just 2 or 3 years old. She was hungry and we caught her as she was on the hunt for breakfast. She let our vehicle follow her around the bush for a good 15 minutes or so as she climbed up rocks to see if there was anything nearby to pounce on. Made for some gorgeous shots:

She finally spotted a steenbuck and started stalking it -- sadly, she was too far into the bush for us to get a good shot of the stalking or attempted kill (the steenbuck got away). But it was still very exciting nonetheless.

We saw a bunch of small animals -- lizards, eagles, squirrel-like furry things -- good opportunity to work on the optical zoom. As we stopped on a overlook for our daily tea and coffee break mid-game drive, for example, we saw another yellow-billed hornbill picking up crumbs from our biscuits along with a pretty wicked lizard. Here's what the shot could've been:

Here's what the zoom let us do: (pretty amazing!)

On the tea stop, we also saw a small group of elephants start to make their way into the open field in front of us. They got about halfway through the field when their matriach apparently smelled our scent coming over the plains. They all stopped and after a moment or so, turned around and went back the way they came! Apparently we smelled or sounded too weird for them to chance being out in the open field like that.

We couldn't leave Elephant Plains without one more close-up encounter with elephants though! Just before we pulled back into the lodge, we literally ran into a herd crossing the road before us.

With that, it was time to end the game drive and leave Elephant Plains. It was an amazing 3 nights there and we would love to come back in the future sometime.


After a quick check-out, we jumped into the waiting minivan for our private 10-hour drive/guided tour through the Panoramic route back to Jo'burg.

In hindsight, we'd have to say that the Panoramic tour may have been our only "this may not have been worth it" activity on the trip thus far. To be fair, this could have been because the sky was a bit hazy throughout the tour, as you will see in some of the pictures below.

The trip started with a stop at the Three Rondavels, a highlight of the Blyde River Canyon viewpoints. It was very hazy, so we couldn't get a really clear shot, so you'll have to take us at our word that it was a pretty spectacular sight. :)

As our guide mentioned, the Blyde River Canyon is the third largest canyon in the world, after the Grand Canyon and the Fish River Canyon in Nairobi. I wish we'd gotton more pictures of the drive up to the Canyon -- as with all trips, you never know that you've passed your best shot until it's too late!

After that, we passed a couple waterfalls (nothing too extraordinary) and arrived at the Bourkes Luck Potholes, where the constant swirling of water over the centuries created these really cool circular holes -- much like potholes -- in the canyon walls:

Here's a shot of Ian posing above the Potholes (I include this shot, even though it's not spectacular, for two reasons: 1, to prove to suspicious blog-readers that we actually did go here and didn't just cut and paste pictures from the internet, and 2, to prove that I did in fact take SOME pictures!)

Finally, we ended at Wunderview -- a viewpoint overlooking the area known as "God''s Window", or, as fans of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" would know it, "the End of the Earth." (rent and watch the movie if you have no idea what I'm talking about -- it's really really good!) Apparently on a clear day, you can see as far as 80 kilometers (some say all the way to Mozambique!):

With that, we completed our official tour stops and proceeded to sit back for six hours of driving until Jo'burg. However, Ian and I both agreed that the tour was made infinitely more worthwhile and interesting because of these next six hours. This is when our guide started talking to us about South Africa and random tidbits on politics, the economy, gender roles, racial tensions, the environment, tourism, and more. For example, he told us that as a coloured person (in South Africa, that is the term for people of black and white mixed race heritage), he was kicked out of the military because he was not black -- he found it quite ironic that the coloureds were previously not-white enough under apartheid were now not-black enough under post-apartheid (apparently the government requires that a lot of companies and organizations maintain a workforce of at least 90 percent black employees).

And of course, what's a South African day without a picture-worthy sunset -- I took this shot as we were driving on the highway, and even then, pretty spectacular.

We checked in for our flight down to Capetown, which, sadly, was delayed, which meant we arrived in Capetown, hopped into our rental Avis and then drove for an hour, on the left side of the road, on highways with very narrow lines and few streetlamps, at 1AM. Yes, I am indeed very thankful to be alive!