R and J Abroad: Entabeni -- Baby Animals and Beautiful Landscapes

In early January, Rishi and I took a road trip to South Africa to visit two safari lodges: Lakeside Lodge in the Entabeni Safari Conservancy, and Inyati in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. During our travels thus far in Southern Africa, these were the third and fourth lodges we’ve visited, and each trip has been wonderful in its own way. This blog entry focuses on Entabeni. Read about our visit to Sabi Sand here.

First off, the landscapes were notably green due to recent summer rainfall, which though lower than usual, still makes a huge difference. Along with the new grass comes an added bonus: baby animals, which were everywhere at Entabeni.

The summer rains arrive in December, more or less, and as the grasslands green up, the animals that graze on those grasses begin to give birth to their young. Rishi was lucky enough to see a wildebeest calf as it dropped from its mother, all wobbly and wet, with its umbilical cord still attached. However, they don’t stay that way for long. Within a couple of hours, according to our guide, a baby wildebeest can run at about the same speed as the rest of the herd, an adaptation necessary for its survival. We also saw lots of very young zebras and impalas.

Entabeni is a 22,000 hectare private reserve in the Waterberg region (http://legend-lodges.co.za/properties/entabeni-safari-conservancy/). The name Entabeni means “the place of the mountain” and as that suggests, a highlight of the reserve was the beautiful mountain scenery. Each game drive included a descent from the reserve’s upper escarpment to the lower escarpment and then a climb back again at the drive’s end. The road that the reserve built over a ridge and alongside a creek was one of the steepest I've ever been on, so that alone was a fun part of each game drive.