Our favorite national park in South Africa is Kruger, so we definitely included it in our month-long road trip. Like most KNP visitors, we wanted to see lions, leopards, and cheetahs, even though we have spotted the 3 cats on previous trips. Fortunately our wishes came true!

Lions – We went with 18 fairly loud, chatty tourists on a sunset drive out of Berg-en-Dal Rest Camp. Our driver/guide stayed in cell phone communication with other drivers/guides who were also looking for lions. When our guy got the call, he quickly did a U turn and we were off to find the kitties at speeds probably higher than the legal limit. We soon saw another safari truck stopped by the roadside. As we watched the three lionesses lying by the pavement we discovered that one of them was missing a tail and it looked like a recent injury from a cat fight. 🙁

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Our second lion encounter during this Kruger visit was definitely the “awwww, how cute” kitty moment. Just before we started on our morning (think cold, 5 am, before sunrise) drive from Lower Sabie Rest Camp, we heard a somewhat faint roaring animal. Khomotso, our driver and guide, said it was a lioness about 1 kilometer away, probably near the bridge. So off we went. We soon found the cat walking along the bridge with her very playful two month old cub. Khomotso explained that the mama gave birth to two cubs, but one of the babies recently fell off the same bridge and was promptly eaten by a crocodile. While we watched the two lions we could see that the lioness was very careful to keep her little one away from the edge of the bridge. At one point she picked up her cub by the scruff of its neck in order to move the baby back to the center of the two-lane bridge.

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Khomotso was our favorite guide of this Kruger visit. She was not only our “personal” guide for the morning drive since we were her only passengers, but also one of two very knowledgeable, rifle-carrying guides on our mid-morning bush walk with us and two other tourists the previous day. And this quarter’s Wild! magazine published a feature article about her.

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We achieved a new lion spotting record for our family the day after our morning drive. Yay! The area around Satara Rest Camp is referred to as lion country, so we made sure to take a guided night drive while we were there. Our guide drove us plus a large group of other international travelers to the nearby Nsemani Dam in search of lions. With the assistance of hand-held spotlights, we watched a pride of 24(!!!) lions with one hefty male, lionesses, and older cubs about half the size of the mothers move across the road from the water to the brush. Several of them stopped to take a short rest right beside the safari truck, so it was easier to take photos and videos of the felines. Unfortunately the male didn’t seem too keen about coming too close, so we didn’t get any good pictures of him. But he did roar repeatedly and impressively while crossing the road.

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The next morning the two us drove back to Nesemani Dam soon after the rest camp gate opened at 7 am in hopes of seeing the lion pride again. And we were not disappointed. Lounging in the warm sun were a dozen of the 24 kitties. We ate breakfast in the parked car as we enjoyed the lions for about 30 minutes before they moved back into the brush.

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Cheetahs – One way to increase the odds of seeing big cats at Kruger is to ask other tourists about their experiences. We got acquainted with our neighbors at Lower Sabie Rest Camp and early one afternoon they excitedly told us that they had just seen two cheetahs resting on the side of a nearby gravel and sand road. We didn’t waste any time driving to the identified location. The beautiful kitties seemed almost oblivious to the slowly-passing or briefly parked cars.

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We also spotted one cheetah sauntering across the road and through the tall grass during our Lower Sabie morning drive with Khomotso.

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Leopards – The most important driving “rule” in an African game park is to stop by other cars parked along the roadside to see if there are any interesting nearby animals. And if there are many stopped cars, the chances are high that there is a lion, cheetah, or leopard within picture-taking distance. And that is how we spotted two impressive adult leopards one afternoon halfway between Satara and Olifants Rest Camps. As we came upon a dozen or so parked cars we saw drivers and passengers looking through long camera lenses and spotting scopes. Fortunately the two leopards were more interested in walking along the riverbed than napping in a tree, so more of the many tourists parked along the stretch of road (including us) could get photos of them.

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Two days later we were surprised to see a leopard leisurely crossing the road in front of us as we drove back to the rest camp just before sunset. Too bad we didn’t get the camera aimed quickly enough to get any good photos of that feline. But it is another great memory of our 2019 kitty adventures in Kruger.