Elephant Plains in Sabi Sand Wildtuin
Elephant Plains -
What makes Elephant Plains so special, apart from the first class accommodation, the perfect hospitality and the excellent food? It is a combination of a number of factors which make it possible to see animals from very close range, due to a number of things:
- the fact that this private park is full of narrow dirt roads, which allow a vehicle to criss-cross through the bush and thus coomb out the area for wildlife;
- the radio communication between different vehicles, so that if a leopard or lion or whatever is spotted somewhere, you are very unlikely to miss the party;
- the excellent guides and spotters. However hard you try to beat them, Anton Wessels and Rifos, as well as others, invariably spotted animals before we did, and were able to follow tracks even when the vehicle was moving at 25 km an hour.
- if the animals of interest lie in the bush, one just leaves the dirt road and crosses through the bush where possible.
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Whilst it can take many weeks to spot e.g. a leopard in the Kruger National Park, and then usually from a distance, it is usually a matter of a few hours in Elephant Plains. Tthe added bonus is that you can usually get so close that you are almost on top of the animal. Being in the midst of a lion pride and looking them square in the face from close quarters, is certainly something quite special. As is following from a close distance two territorial male leopards defending their territory.
