Day 20 Londolozi – South Africa day 6
Today is our last full day in Londolozi. Booooo. This morning may have been the most beautiful sunrise we have seen yet. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just today’s sunrise and the same amount of beautiful as the others we have seen here. It only felt more beautiful because it was happening today. This morning during sunrise we saw a big herd of elephants. It was a lovely scene with the elephants eating and the sun rising as the backdrop. This happened in the same area as the pond we watched the sunset last night with the rhinos. We popped by to see the leopard from yesterday morning and how she was making out with her kill. The kill was still hanging in the tree, but mostly gone at that point. About all that was left appeared to be the rib cage area. You could tell she had eaten quite a lot, her belly was full, she was breathing hard, and she looked sleepy. We saw African ducks. They are different then our ducks, they do a lot of flying, live in trees, and build nests in those trees. It felt strange seeing a duck standing on the branch of a tree high in the air.  Some zebras finally reappeared this morning. Todays herd of zebras included a baby zebra that was still nursing. These were the first zebras we had seen since our first day here. Zebras have very weak spines, this is why there are not a working animal, like horses. Overall it was a quiet morning in the bush. We really did not see a lot of animals.
We had nice conversation with the LA couple. This was their last drive. They are heading out for the rest of their journey today. He is surfing in Cape Town and she is climbing Kilimanjaro. After that they are doing safari in several more African countries. It was nice to finally meet someone else that does not shy away from the issue of unicorns, but knows they are real, as I know.
Now that they are gone we will have our last two game drives alone again. A huge thank you goes out to the eccentric and reclusive Fenton family in room 2. Because of them we have been the luckiest boy and girl in the world. We don’t know what is going to happen for lunch today, we just know we were told to be ready to leave for our game drive at 1:45pm instead of 3pm. Some more Londolozi surprises we are sure. I guess they were not quite out of surprises. I assume it will be some kind of lunch out in the bush since the weather today is absolutely perfect.
Another private ride this afternoon thanks to the other couple leaving and the eccentric Fenton’s. Did someone say surprise? Of course they had another surprise for us. Jules drove us out into the bush to what we both expected to be an outside lunch. It was that and more. He took us to a place the call The Lookout. Wow. It is literally every little boys dream tree fort. It was a giant deck with a table set up with our lunch, a couch and bean bag chairs. It was up in the air about 25 feet, right on the river, overlooking almost 360 degrees, yet still completely shaded by the tree in which it’s built. Just insanely amazing. Jules dropped us off and left us alone for about an hour and a half. This is another reason I do not think it is actually that dangerous out here. We ate lunch and then just relaxed in the tree house/fort. He came back to get us at 3:30pm and we restarted the afternoon game drive.
This will be our last evening drive :-(.  The first thing that came along was a rhino. A really weird story goes along with this rhino. The most tactful way I can describe this rhino is that he was a dirty dragging dick kicker. This rhino’s junk was so big it drug in the dirt underneath of him. It also had wings, strange. Yes wings, like those wings shown on TV commercials for the lady products. Nothing was wrong with any of that. The problem was that he was intentionally kicking his own dick with both of his back feet. It was not just something that happened as he strolled. He looked really angry at his own penis, like it had recently betrayed him in some way. If he spoke English he would have been yelling, “bad dick!” We watched, laughed, and then moved on.
We saw a lot more elephants tonight. This pack had a few babies. Baby elephants are quite adorable. We saw bunches of animals that did not get mentioned daily but were seen daily. There were impalas, gnus/wildebeests, hippos, nyalas, grey dykers, steenboks, hyenas, mongooses or mongeese. We headed back over to the area that was control burned. On the way there we passed another Land Rover going the opposite direction. That was the first time we saw other people in a long time. It sometimes felt like we were the only people left on the planet. Once we got to the burn area we came across a small herd of zebras. The zebras oddly blended in on the charred land.
Back over on the other side of the reserve it was time to check in on the cheetah. The sun was setting and the skyline was beautiful. We found the cheetah. We could tell from her belly that she had recently eaten. She was relaxed and mostly laying around. We watched the sun set over the landscape of the bush as the backdrop of the cheetah. Amazing. We had a quick stop for happy hour where we saw a dead, eaten turtle. It was a leopard tortoise. This is one of the small five, but we can’t count it. After sunset we headed back to camp. We spotted a sleeping lion on the way back in. He was annoyed with the spotlight, but too much of a sissy to do anything about it.
As soon as we arrived back it was dinnertime. We were assuming a normal dinner since we were the only guests, wrong. Kirsty and Jabs still set up this amazing dinner for us with a private table at the top of the steps to the lodge…candles, lanterns, everything. It looked like a fairy tale land. I know I probably say this a lot but this week at Londolozi has truly been the most amazing week of my life. I think Wifey feels the same. This trip will be one of our most memorable events from all aspects. The scenery, animals, service we received, attention, accommodations, everything imaginable.

A select few pictures here.