Still recovering from my trip to South Africa. All told, I spent 23 hours straight in either an airplane or airport, but I can absolutely say it was well worth it. The Nedile Lodge in the Welgevonden Game Reserve was home for seven days and I can easily see why it was named the Lodge of the Year in the African Continent. Great accommodations, location, amenities and outstanding food. Add to that World Class Rangers, which made it one of my favorite trips ever.
Our Rangers seemed to find the right spots for big game and were usually the ones that found the big game before any of the other Rangers from other lodges. For the first few days, the cheetahs were nowhere to be found. That was okay, as we were treated to lions, lionesses and their cubs. When we set out on our Thursday afternoon game drive, our Rangers were confident that they would find us cheetahs. It wasn’t long before they found them, but they were deep in the bush resting. Since we knew where they were, we went in search of other game. After shooting a lioness, we went back for the cheetahs and after waiting awhile, the cheetahs were on the move. Our Rangers seemed to be in the cheetahs’ heads and always seemed to know where they would end up and get us into prime shooting position. This is a shot of one of the cheetahs (the second one was his brother) in absolutely perfect golden evening light. What a magnificent animal.