This story has a few twists and turns even before we arrive in Madikwe Game Reserve. Shortly after our 2024 Okavango trip (links to all posts for that trip in my Archives), we started researching our next destination. Many South Africans are unaware of Madikwe, in Northwest Province, close to the Botswana border, despite this being the fifth largest game reserve in South Africa. One of the big attractions of this reserve, as far as I am concerned, is that it boasts a healthy African Wild Dog population. The reserve is run as a partnership between government, private lodge owners and local population. Since some of the lodges offer SADC specials, we decided to make use of on of these offers. Bookings were handled by Biggestleaf Travel, who had also organised our Okavango trip.
Soon we had decided on a suitable lodge, one of our major requirements being that it had to have a photography hide. Jaci’s Tree Lodge seemed like a great option, with good SADC specials and a lovely hide. However, no sooner had we paid our deposit, than we received an email informing us that the lodge had suffered severe flood damage and all bookings were being canceled, leaving us with three options: cancel and get a refund, postpone until an unknown date when they would be ready to receive guests again or book another, more expensive lodge where the SADC specials were not nearly as good as Jaci’s. Since we had made up our minds that we wanted to visit Madikwe and had already arranged leave for our intended dates, we opted for the third choice.
On the morning of our departure from Gqeberha, the weather forecast was for heavy winds. Our Airlink flight was luckily able to take off before the wind picked up too much. Arriving in Johannesburg, I saw that the flight meant to arrive in Gqeberha 20 minutes after our scheduled departure, could not land due to the severe wind.
A 3 hour wait at OR Tambo, followed by a short hop in the ubiquitous Cessna Caravan, saw us arriving at Impodimo lodge just in time for High Tea.
After tea, we set out on our first game drive. Our guide, Sam, informed us that the cheetahs had been spotted at the opposite end of the reserve and that we could choose between a hard drive to get there in time, or a leisurely game drive which would not allow us enough time to get to see them. Since we were keen to see them and one other couple on the vehicle, who were on their last day at Madikwe, were equally keen, the choice was made to go for the cheetahs. Having found them, I was slightly disappointed to notice that both were collared. This was understandably necessary from a conservation perspective, since the reserve had recently lost two females, only had four males left and were trying to study their behaviour before reintroduction of more females. From a photography perspective, this meant that I had to stick to tightly framed and cropped head shots if I did not want the unsightly collars in my photos.
We stuck around with them as long as possible. Having seen them launch an unsuccessful hunting attempt, we decided that it was time to return to the lodge, arriving back well after dark and just in time for an excellent dinner.
Etienne's Camera 