Ivory Tree Game Lodge - Pilanesberg

Hello Journeyers!
While Cedric's mother is here, she wanted to treat us so we decided to go to the bush. Unfortunately we could only do one night. What a struggle to find a Lodge that allows you to stay for only one night! Cedric emailed the wonderful people at Bush Breaks and they managed to find space at Ivory Tree Game Lodge.

Ivory Tree Game Lodge is a 5 Star Lodge situated in the Pilanesberg National Park. They have 4 Luxury Suites and 60 Standard Suites. I've never stayed in a Game Lodge with that many rooms, so it is safe to say that I was a bit skeptical. After being welcomed by very friendly staff and a fast and easy check in  upon arrival, my skepticism started to fade away.

Lunch was ready, which we had to unfortunately decline as we just came back from a picnic in the Pilanesberg (coming to the blog soon) and our bellies were full and happy. After a steep little walk to our Suites we were very impressed with the size and look of the rooms. It's nice and spacious with a little patio looking out into the bush. The bed is big enough to sleep 5 people as Cedric said and way too comfortable. It took a lot of encouragement and convincing within myself to get off that bed every time.

We were given our little itinerary at reception and our afternoon Game Drive was at 4 pm. We only had 30 min which is definitely not enough time for the power nap I was planning on. Cedric and I decided to go wait in the bar area and have a drink. 4 o'clock came and we were off, 9 Guests and our Ranger. If you have been following OJTE you will know that when I'm on a Game Drive there's only 2 animals that I REALLY want need to see, and that is the Elephant and the Leopard. The rest is just ummm...well nice to see I guess.
PLUS I only count game sightings that are close enough for me to zoom into their eyes and look into their souls.

The only thing that I didn't like with the game drives are that because Pilanesberg is open to the public (Like Kruger National Park), we had a handful of cars with us at each viewing. It makes it uncomfortable and I feel sorry for the animals being surrounded by that many cars. On our evening drive we had one very nice sighting. The wild dogs. Cedric loves the wild dogs and after seeing them I understand why. They are beautiful. We arrived back at the Lodge to a buffet as good as one can get.

Sunday morning, 5:30 am we received our wake-up call, (Damn you early wake-up calls), and we were ready and waiting to leave by 6 am. Today we were on the hunt for one of the cats. We found some, 3 lionesses and a young male lion. We sat there for a while just watching them. That was rather nice. But I did miss not seeing elephants (we did see one far in the bush, but as mentioned above that doesn't count to me) and the leopards (we saw them too but high up the mountain, so also doesn't count). I guess it's all just a matter of luck at the end of the day. And luck was partially on our side. ;)

Coqui Francolin

Back at the Lodge we filled our empty tummies with a good breakfast buffet and our freezing bodies with some warm coffee. With heavy hearts we headed back to our rooms to take a quick power nap and pack. The only down side to big lodges like this is it's not as intimidate but perfect for first time safari goers.

Thank you so much to Ivory Tree Staff for your friendly smiles, no matter what time of the day those Colgate smiles was there! We really enjoyed our stay!

Rates are as follow:

Source

You can also visit Bush Breaks, we booked through them and they have some really great specials sometimes!

You can find them here:

WEBSITE

FACEBOOK

Have you ever been to Ivory Tree Game Lodge and what was your thoughts?

------------------------------

Disclaimer: All expenses were paid for by us for our trip to Ivory Tree Game Lodge. As always all comments and opinions are my own. All of the content and images posted are my own unless otherwise specified / linked to the original source. Please feel free to share photographs and material from this site but please link back to the original image or post.