Originally Posted by
Swanky Safari
Johan Rebel - have you been to a private reserve. .
No offense implied or intended, but that's the funniest thing I've been asked in years!
I don't really keep track, but when I casually made a list about a decade ago, I stopped when I reached 115 visited National Parks and game reserves of all kinds. That's African ones only, I wasn't counting those I've visited in South America, Europe and the US.
I've done literally thousands of game drives, at a rough guess about half of them in private game reserves. The whole gamut from super fancy 5-star to plain vanilla. I figure I pretty much know what I'm talking about by now.
You may have misunderstood, but when I wrote "Rare is the private reserve where you can have six or seven sightings in one game drive", I was of course specifically referring to lions and leopards. And by "six or seven sightings", I meant exactly that. So not six or seven lions or leopards, but seeing six or seven different (prides of) lions in different locations in one game drive. That's almost impossible to do in a private game reserve, simply because the traversing area is not large enough for so many lions. In the KNP, on the other hand, it can be done, and does happen. It is a function of Kruger's size (huge) and high animal densities (not everywhere). It also really helps if you know the park well, plan your game drives very carefully, have plenty of experience spotting game, and keep your eyes peeled.
Kruger records (there are undoubtedly people who have done even better):
Leopard:
- Six different sightings in one morning drive (just driving down the tar road from Skukuza to Afsaal).
- Seven different sightings in one night drive from Byamiti, all on one single road.
Lion:
- Eight different sightings in a day.
- 67 individual lions driving down the tar road from Letaba to Skukuza in one morning. I can't remember the number of sightings, though.
So much for pure BS. Thanks for the compliment, though!
Johan