Tinga Lodge - Lion Sands Game Reserve, Kruger National Park

After River Lodge, we headed off to Tinga Lodge for our last night of magic in the bush. I honestly have nothing bad to say about any of the MORE properties. Each one of them are unique and special and every single time we go your experiences are different.

Tinga Lodge was great, with only 9 (Massive) rooms it feels more intimate and private.

The rooms are amazing and the view of the Sabie River from your terrace which has a plunge pool by the way is breathtaking. We even had some Ellies come visit us in front of the room, crossing the river, playing in the water! What a welcome committee!

What better way to take in the new scenery while sipping on a nice cold beverage, as the temperatures were boiling.

We spent our days taking in the beauty, eating (you test your body limits with eating when visiting MORE properties) some of the best tasting food and going on game drives. We had some rain on our last morning game drive, but spotted a mother leopard with 2 grown cubs. Very shy and you really had to concentrate not to miss them. But to spot that many different leopards in one trip is rare!

The evening after dinner we went back to our rooms, with a sad good bye on our bed we realised that this was the end of our trip. They even ran a nice warm bath for me with candles and rose petals. Heaven!!! I am a sucker for a good bath!

So with heavy hearts we were off, but we cannot wait for our next trip back! We are already planning a nice Kruger trip for August! 

Thank you to the Tinga team for making our stay extra special and for letting us leave with tears in our eyes. Happy tears of course! :)

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. 

Kohande Tented Camp

Hello Journeyers and welcome to my very first post of my new series called "Affordable Fridays".
The name says it all, but for those who don't understand. Here I will share fun and affordable places that you can visit. I won't necessarily physically share places I've been to but it's still nice if you are on a tight budget like us to know about places that won't break the bank.

I have shared this place before HERE, but we were there just after winter and it was still dry and dull, yes that is right I'm talking about Kohande Tented Camp. We went again this year as we missed the bush atmosphere so much after our island holiday and well frankly we just enjoy the place. Plus it does look completely different with the trees and bushes looking thick, green and healthy.

About
"Kohandè is situated in the scenic LEEUWKLOOF VALLEY CONSERVANCY in GAUTENG, just north-east of PRETORIA (32km from Sefako Makgatho(Zambesi drive)) at DEWAGENSDRIFT – in the heart of DINOKENG- which makes it the ideal destination for nature lovers.
Three luxury tents with on suite bathrooms provide accommodation for 2 adults each (sorry, no children allowed). A fully equipped kitchenette with fridge/freezer makes self catering a pleasure. Each tent is private with its own lovely panoramic view over the bushveld where you can relax and enjoy the extraordinary sunsets and listen to the call of jackals."

It is perfect for weekend breakaways for people who live in Gauteng, it's approximately 105km from Johannesburg {according to Google Maps - so please don't shoot me if I'm wrong}. As you drive in there are a few antelope breeders {I think} so you see quite a few interesting animals. Like the Gold Wildebeest and White Blesbok for example. Which are both beautiful animals. Althoug once you go into Kohande you don't see any animals. But the noises of these very shy animals are very intense at night. At one stage I could have sworn one of them were right behind me at the boma area. haha
And once again we heard the lions at night. I loved that. That must be one of my favourite things while there.

The view from the pool is even more spectacular in summer. Everything is so green and we spent most of the day lounging next to the pool while playing card games.

Things to do
There's not much you can do in Kohande except relax. But you can go for a hike or do some birdwatching.
Some of the nearby attractions include the Lion Camp, Golf, Hot Air Ballooning or Day Spa.

Things that made me happy
It is extremely neat and clean and the owners are very welcoming and warm.
You can hear lions at night! {I told you this was my favourite}
The view from the pool is very nice.

Things that made me sad
I wish we saw more animals during the day.

The price is R300 per person per night and you have to stay a minimum of 2 nights.

You can find them here
WEBSITE
FACEBOOK
EMAIL

Please do share with me what you think of the place if you decide to go visit!

And my OJTE Star Rating verdict is......drum roll please!!!!!

As all of you know we have Mo-Landy {#molandy}, which is our car and now we have a little mascot. A small orange dodo who we called Mo-Landy {#mododo}. Feel free to follow them along with our travel one #ojte_travel.

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

Disclaimer: All expenses were paid for by us for our weekend to Kohande Tented Camp. As always, all thoughts and opinions are our 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. 

Jackalberry Lodge

Hello Journeyers! It's me again! And we are 1 day away from the WEEKEND! Can I get a WoOp WoOp!
As promised yesterday I said that I will share our second and last part of our holiday with you guys today.
Cedric and I love being "spoiled" once in a while, and that's why Cedric decided that we should end off our holiday with a bang. We found this website called BUSH BREAKS, and for any bush lovers out there who loves the more glamorous part of the bush life. Please do yourself a favor and visit them. They have great specials!
We found a great deal with Jackalberry Lodge, and they are situated in the Thornybush Game Reserve. We finally arrived around lunch time after our 5 hour drive through the Kruger. From the moment we walked in there we were welcomed with friendly smiling faces. I love that! We did all the paperwork and the Lodge Manager gave us a rundown of how things will go and off we went to the room to freshen up a bit before our late lunch and the game drive.

This was our room.

I love all the finishing touches. Makes it extra special.

The bathroom was beautiful!

Details again.

Our Welcome letter. 

We had a few drinks at the bar and then had lunch. They made sure they fed us enough I can tell you that! And amazing food! Thank you very much Chef Martha! Your food is amazing! :) But I am a bit upset with you for the extra 2 kilograms that I picked up that weekend. (kidding)
And then we hit the bush for our game drive. Our very friendly Ranger, Brad and Tracker, Lucas made sure that we saw the Big 5 and even a few extras. Thank you so much guys! And Lucas you and your Eagle eyes are great, spotting those Bush Babies! WOW! And Brad, that experience with the Elephants was unbelievable! That was definitely the highlight of my LIFE!!! Well for now! hehe.
And thank you to Atasja, Tom and his wife Karlien for making us feel at home and relaxed and thank you to Gideon and Godfrey for keeping your your smiles on and our glasses full! And the ladies that kept our room so neat and clean, and put little Nougat on our pillows every night! Thanks to you guys my dreams were sweet and happy!

Like I said before, we saw some amazing wildlife and I was in awe of everything we saw. Our whole experience was perfect.

I mean just look at this collection of wildlife!!! I love Elephants and Leopards! I will sit and watch them for hours! Wow is all I can say.

This last picture Brad took, thank you! :) But thank you again to EVERYONE and if I left anyone else THANK YOU TOO!!! We had an amazing time at Jackalberry Lodge and we cannot wait to be back there as soon as possible! Thank you thank you thank you!
And the BIGGEST THANK YOU goes to my boo, thank you so much for being in my life and making all of this possible! I love you!!!

Please go join their group on Facebook! 

Till we meet again!
Have a great Thursday! And remember...tomorrow is FRIDAY!!! :) xxx

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

Disclaimer: All expenses were paid for by us for our trip to Jackalberry 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.