Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report - Londolozi

This is the second installment of my trip report. Our family of 4 (two boys ages 13 and 15) went to South Africa for 9 days over Christmas holidays. First part of the trip was in Cape Town - which I posted on previously.

Our second, and probably best part, of our holiday was at Londolozi Pioneer Camp. We were there from December 31st until January 4th.

This is a CC Africa property currently. It changes back to the landowners (Vartys, I believe) in February of 2007. I am not sure if the property will stay the same as it is now, as some of the staff may leave and the programs may change. Having said that, this property was beautiful. We had two of the chalets. They are very spacious with a main bedroom and bathroom which is also very large with tub and shower. There is also a terrific outdoor shower.

The camp manager, Sean, couldn't have been more efficient or nice. He was very attentive to all of his guests and worked very hard to make sure that all the small things were looked after.

The food was amazing. The chef, for the most part, was Lindsay. They usually had two choices for each meal and they were of a very high quality.

Now, for the safari drive part. Our guide was Melvin and our tracker was Milton. I would highly recommend asking for this team as they are both knowledgeable and fun. The game vehicles are open air safari landrovers and we never had more than 6 in them at one time. They do two drives a day - one at 5:30AM and the other at 4PM - each lasting for 3 - 4 hours.

We saw all the big 5 and much,much more. Had the luck to see a giraffe kill shortly after the lions had killed it. Both amazing and somewhat sad at the same time. The pride was two males and three females - one of the males had been separated from the group and we were lucky enough to track him for quite some time while he was trying to find his pride again. He was roaring for them and they were deliberately ignoring him while they were feasting. When we left, he was still not reunited with his pride.

Saw leopards on 3 occassions. One was a mom and her cub and the other two times were single males. The leopards proved the most elusive for us to find.

Say many baby elephants, baby rhinos, baby warthogs etc. The animals and the landscape were truly spectacular. We are already planning on when we can return to this great country.

I do not have any negatives to say about Londolozi Pioneer Camp. We did look at the other Londolozi properties while we were there - they are all attached by pathways. The Pioneer camp is quite small with a maximum of 12 guests at any one time. We loved the itimacy of the camp and can't say enough about the professionalism and spirit of the staff.

We have travelled quite a bit as a family, Thailand, Australia, US, Italy etc. and have to say, that this was probably our favourite destination so far. The beauty and mystery of Africa are captivating.