The Animals and Our Friends at Kwandwe

We have just spent four nights at The Great Fish River Lodge in the Kwandwe nature reserve.   It is very difficult to describe our experience.  It will do my best but will likely have to tell you all about it in person once we are home.   It was absolutely magical.

We saw lions mating 10 feet from our jeep.  We saw elephants mating which is extremely rare.  Our ranger, Doc, had never seen this in the 10 years he had been working as a ranger and said that it was the one thing he hoped to see in his life.   That experience left all of us in awe.

We also saw young lions playing and practicing how to kill and young elephants practicing locking their tusks and fighting.   And, that’s just the start.  We’ve taken about 800 pictures so we had to choose what to share with you.

The Kwandwe nature reserve was created 10 years ago to restore the area to its original state with the animals roaming the way they had hundreds of years ago.  Seven farms were purchased over 22 000 hectares and animals were slowly introduced.    The villages on the land were all allowed to remain there many of the people work in the reserves and lodges.   On the 22 000 hectares there are only two lodges and two houses.  In the houses, you can bring your family or friends and have the entire place to yourself.   At full capacity, we were told that the reserve can host approximately 130 people.   So, there are not a lot of people at any time and visitors get a very intimate experience.  Not quite as intimate as Rob and I.   We were actually the only guests at our lodge for one night and we were the only guests with our Ranger and Tracker for 5 game drives.  Not only was it amazing to be by ourselves but we became good friends with Doc, our Ranger, and Siza, our Tracker.  We laughed and joked as they told us stories about their families and boyhood stories of growing up here when it was still farm land.   We told them about Canada and answered all of their questions about snow, what our houses are like, etc…

We have placed a number of pictures below because we are catching a plane shortly to head to the next lodge, Ngala near Krugar.   It is owned by the same company and we have been asked to say hello to some people who now where there and had previously worked with our friends at Kwandee.   Rob and I have both talked about lowering our expectations for the next park because we know it will likely not compare to what we have just done. 

We are having an amazing time and feel very blessed to have been able to meet Doc and Siza and get to know them, how much they respect the owners of the reserves, and how much the reserves have given back to the communities.