It has always a dream of mine to visit Londolozi. When someone mentions a private game reserve it’s always the first name that comes to mind. So when my mom received a trip for two as a birthday gift from a client, I was ecstatic! I could not wait for the time to finally arrive. We arrived at Londolozi expecting it to be very cold but we were lucky to have lovely sunny days. We stayed at Varty Camp for three nights (not nearly long enough) and absolutely loved it.
The beautifully adorned Varty deck where we spent many mornings and afternoons
When Richard Burman our ranger, and tracker Richard Siwela, asked us what we were most interested in seeing I jumped at the chance to say cheetah. Lucky for me there were two young cheetah in the area and off we went to find them. Richard had heard I was interested in photography and went out of his way at every sighting to make sure I had the best spot.
The sighting that I was most excited about – seeing two young cheetahs
A beautiful African sunset
‘All this attention is making me tried!”
Seeing hyena pups was another highlight of the trip
I liked this interesting angle of the leopard with its back to us.
Some of the sightings that stand out the most were the very small hyena cubs that we saw at their den, and the lion cubs (which we saw on two separate occasions) and then of course the leopards, being my favourite animal. On one of our morning drives we were heading towards a sighting when our tracker said he smelt a leopard. Smelling a leopard? We had obviously not spent enough time smelling animals! So off we went into the bush in the direction of the scent and to my surprise found the Marthly male and the Tamboti female. We watched the leopards for about two hours with the female showing off and displaying herself to the male. The Marthly male however showed no interest at all! We also saw a tiny rhino and some very young elephants.
At rest on the warm granite rocks with mom not far off.
A hyena pup peers out of the den site just long enough for me to get the shot
A special rhino sighting. I couldn’t believe how tiny the calf was.
William Ford, the Varty Camp manager, also knew I was interested in photography and suggested I visit the Creative Hub to browse through my images, maybe edit a few and to print a photo on canvas. I wanted to wait right till the end of our trip just in case I managed to capture a better image to print, so on our last afternoon just before our drive we went up to visit Kate who downloaded my images and showed me how to edit them using Lightroom. I absolutely loved the Creative Hub, everything about it inspired me and after printing two of my photos on canvas I could not actually believe I had taken them!
I loved seeing this herd of elephants captured in the late afternoon light.
Londolozi did not disappoint and we were able to get some great sightings of my favourite animal.
The mighty king
The staff at Londolozi were all fantastic and our ranger and tracker really made our time there amazing. Our entire trip to Londolozi was phenomenal and really lived up to all expectations, making this one of the best holidays ever!
Written and Photographed by: Megan Thomas
Beautiful pictures, Megan
Thank you 🙂
Very professional pics.
A lovely blog Megan. Thank you.
Great photographs Megan!
You are a talented photographer. I hope you have returned to Londolozi since you wrote this article.