Lion Encounters and a Lucky Honey Badger: A Kruger Finale

It was our last day in Kruger and we were staying at Satara. We woke up at 4am to make the early gate opening time and hopefully get lucky with lions on our last game drive. We were going to drive the S100 and then head to the Orpen Gate.

We were first on the road and found fresh lion tracks along the S41. We tracked them all down the S41 and onto the H5 where we found their tracks on the S37 again. About 2km down the S37 we found one female lying in the bushes next to the road. Little did we know how many lions there were.

As we watched, more and more kept appearing and we ended up counting a total of eight adult females and ten cubs. We sat with them for all the time we could, watching the cubs play in the long grass. Seven of the females went off to hunt and the cubs went to sleep out of sight so we divided to leave, satisfied with our luck.

However, only about 4km further down the H5, my dad caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye. "HONEY BADGER" he shouted, almost giving me a heart attack. There right next to the road in the middle of the day was a honey badger (my first ever!!) I was shocked as I had been looking for a honey badger for the whole trip but didn’t have any luck, until now.

Surly we had used up all of our luck for the day, or so we thought. As we were driving down the H7 on our way to Orpen gate we bumped into a sighting not far from Orpen camp. There next to the road was even more lions. There was a mating pair of lions, the male put on a good show as he was very aggressive and irritable. This made our daily total of lions 20 a new record for us. This really was a great way to end off an amazing trip and makes us look forward to the next one.

By Caleb van der Merwe