After a slow morning drive, Nadav decided to head back to Skukuza for lunch. He was with some family friends who had never been to the park before. At around 1 PM, Nadav started to get a hunch. “I normally head back to camp in the late morning, until about 2 PM, but on this day, something told me I needed to be out there.”
Nadav knows that it’s usually slow-going at this time, but he decided to follow his gut feeling and the group headed out. They made their way to the S114. “This is one of my favorite roads in the park, plus we saw a ting on the Latest Sightings App about a lioness who was seen in the area that morning with cubs.”
After using the app to track the lioness’s last known location, it was disappointing for them to see no signs of lions, or anything else. They continued driving for about 2 km, slowly scanning each bush, and lo and behold, Nadav spotted a lion’s head.
“I just managed to see her head in the far distance; we all got super excited. The visibility at this point was about 2/5, but that didn’t last long… Within 5 minutes of spotting her, the lioness got up and headed right toward us!”
As the lioness made her way to the road, she started calling. “I knew that she was last seen with cubs, so when I heard the calls, I had no doubt, these were contact calls.” Lionesses use a low-pitched humming or moaning sound, often described as a ‘contact call,’ to let their little ones know it’s time to move.
The anticipation was killing them; they knew what the calls were for, but they couldn’t see anything yet. Then, amazingly, six of the cutest little lion cubs came marching out of the bush one by one towards their mother, who was out on the open road.
“We couldn’t believe what we were seeing! It was so exciting and unexpected; you never really see this during the heat of the day.”
They all started walking up and down and zigzagging across the road. “I’m not sure what they were doing, but to us, it almost seemed as if she was showing her cubs off.”
“The lions eventually stopped to relax right next to the road, where lots of other people got to see them too. This lasted for well over an hour, and we stayed with them until eventually they moved off, out into the bush.”
