For those of you have seen lions, you will know that they come across as lazy animals. They will be found sleeping for the majority of the day, and during this time, they mostly follow the shade around a shrub. This applies to the bright, warm daylight hours. When the temperatures are slightly cooler, the weather cloudy or raining, or it is early morning or early evening – they are predominantly active. When you think about it – they are being rather smart operating during these hours. Firstly, it is so much more pleasant to move around when it is cooler. Secondly, imagine that your eyesight is at least six times better than your prey at night – why wouldn’t you use that to your advantage? As humans we also prefer to run in the early mornings or late afternoons rather than during the heat in the midday. We conserve energy this way, so why wouldn’t a lion do the same thing?

Moving in the cover of darkness with cooler temperatures, lions are not lazy…

Often predators will yawn and groom themselves before getting active.

The best time to spend with a pride of lions and get a true sense of their behaviour would be later in the evening. This is when they are going to get up and move around. Should an opportunity to hunt present itself – the odds are stacked heavily in their favour. Knowing this we decided to spend an evening following a pride after sunset. 

The only pride on Londolozi at that time was the Nkuhuma Breakaway pride.  It was looking good because they had been sleeping all day and their stomachs were empty. This piqued our optimism but there was a catch… they were close to our boundary and in a very thick area, meaning they could be hard to follow.

After our sundowners we all got ready for a night with lions, changing our camera settings for night photography and for the kids, we got the popcorn ready for them to “watch the movie” as they said.

We returned to where the pride was last seen and to our disappointment they were no longer there. We drove up and down the thicket line for a while with no sign of them. We decided to go back to the road and have a look further afield…

Only to be greeted by the entire pride strolling towards us!

There’s something quite special about following male lions at night. A clear look of intention comes over their face as the sun sets and they get on the move. Here, one of the Avoca Males drops his nose to the ground on the scent of another young lion that had moved through the same area the night before.

We managed to follow them through the thicker vegetation as they ventured down towards the Manyeleti River, which during the rainy season can often be very risky to cross. In fear of getting the pink pouch as your vehicle sinks in the wet soft sand, our best approach at this point, was to rather drive along the riverbank in hopes of watching from an elevated position. As we rumbled along slowly we went over a large bump followed by a loud, bang! Tracker Advice and I looked at each other knowing the situation we could very well have just found ourselves in. Yes, we were stuck, luckily for us, it was between two rocks, not in the sand. With a slight bit of patience, we had to do a 10,000 point turn moving an inch each time until finally, we were out. The next problem was that the pride wasn’t waiting around for us. We had lost them…

Our only hope was to drive in the general direction they had been walking in the hopes of bumping into them again. As we continued down the road one lioness ran out of a bush in front of us. It looked as though she was looping around a potential prey using the bush as cover, but that was not it…

We came around a corner to 9 lions chasing a fully grown buffalo bull. We all screamed in excitement throwing our hands in the air. I just remember hearing the kids say this is what we wanted to see with a high squeak in their voice!

It was dark and tricky to see what was going on in all the commotion and we were unable to take any photos of the scene. Before we knew it…

The buffalo had plunged itself into a pool of water in the Sand River as a last resort to get away from the lions. It worked, this had stopped the chase. The lions were reluctant to follow the buffalo in the knowledge that there were crocodiles lurking in the water. Frustrated with the one that got away, the lions lay down on the side of the river hissing at the crocodile and watching the buffalo walk out the other side of the river and into the distance with a kind of victory sway.

After a few minutes, the pride finally decided it was okay to cross the river with the use of a rock in the middle. They all ran straight for the rock and then waited there for a moment or two while hissing and growling at any potential approaching crocodiles.

By the time we had managed to loop around to the other side of the Sand River, the lions were nowhere to be seen, just like that, they had disappeared into the darkness again. It is often hard to follow lions at night as they move around with the intention of going undetected, wanting to remain unseen. Still high on the adrenaline, we made our way home to tell the story we won’t forget!