For our first full day in the park we were up early and planned to head down to Lower Sabie and back for our morning drive. It was very dark at 6am and we started out on a bit of a night drive! We soon learned that early mornings weren’t really the best for game viewing due to the cold temperatures which seemed to keep the animals out of sight.
Barely 500m from camp we found the source of some of the sounds from the previous night with a clan of about 6 hyena
We continued on in the dark with the kids using their torches to look for anything along the way. Past the H12 bridge we came across our first cats of the trip in the form of a lion couple who were just walking off the road as we arrived. The bush was pretty dense so it wasn’t the best sighting - particularly in the dim morning light - but it was nice to find our first lions
There had been a buffalo kill a bit further along the H4-1 and although lion had been on the kill the previous day, it was now deserted except for some vultures and hyenas looking on from a distance.
Just past Nkuhlu there were more lion starting to thaw out in the morning sun.
We did a bit of a loop around the S79 causeway finding a burchell’s coucal, back up the tar road where there were some hyena snoozing next to the road and then on to check out Mhlupheka on the S21 where there was a very old looking elephant.
As we went back down the tar towards Lower Sabie past the hyenas, one of their youngsters popped out and gave us a great show doing its best to get some cuddles with mom.
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They even have the buffalo pie on the menu again 
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