If you love the bushveld and wildlife, this corner of Limpopo is definitely the place to visit. Hugging Kruger National Park, it has its own Big Five game reserves that are well worth checking out.
Fellow journalist Kerry Simpson and I had a great game-watching experience in Thornybush Game Reserve, where we were taken to see a lioness with a wildebeest kill.
Her cubs, about a year old, still young enough to have some spots on them, had already eaten and their mother was feasting as we arrived. The cubs were either lazy or simply in a stupour.
The lioness nervously let us photograph her for about half an hour, until she eventually got annoyed and pulled the wildebeest carcass deep into the bush.
On my last day in Limpopo, host Mike Lawrie took me to Moholoholo, a wildlife rehabilitation centre. For various reasons, the animals here cannot be released into the wild immediately – or, in some cases, at all. This non-profit organisation is ‘home’ to lions from a Mozambique circus, a gorgeous leopard, restless cheetahs (they love to pace), caracal, serval, vultures, crowned and martial eagles and a black rhino calf that was rescued after being trapped in a mud wallow in Kruger. Orphaned, poisoned or injured wildlife rely on visitors to keep them alive, so donations are very welcome. Moholoholo has its own blog here: http://moholoholo.blogspot.com
To my mind, the leopard is the most arresting cat – perhaps not the most beautiful, aesthetically, but form and function have given them a completeness, a self-sufficiency, that I feel inspires not just a little bit of terror in all of us.
This male cannot be released into the wild, so he spends his days at Moholoholo and would probably appreciate a visit.
By Fiona Zerbst
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