My first day of volunteering was a little uneventful until my first game drive. I did induction with Cassandra (Business Manager) and Ziggy (Community Liaison Officer), learnt a few words of Zulu and chit chatted with other volunteers. This afternoon I got to go on a game drive. I do love being in a private game reserve and realised why when we saw 3 lions. Previously the driver stops on the road and you see what you can see from the road. No vehicles are to leave the road or else you could get a 10,000USD fine. The bush is thick and so I thought, hmmm ok, they are lying down, can't really see… well Willard swings to the left, runs over literally anything in his path that is not an animal and we are within 2 metres of the Lions. After each 10 minute stint, he says - I will change the angle, and again drives over any foliage in the way and we get a different angle - amazing! Now we saw 3 lions, ok, bit of a yawn, seen over 70 now, saw some Impala, small yawn again. Then a bit more exciting, we saw a Zebra that had a massive gash around its neck. Willard tells us that he has obviously had an argument with a Lion and the Zebra is lucky to be alive. Now that he has a wound and it smells Willard feels that his attraction for predators is very high and his life is likely to be short. We drove on and the excitement level hit the highest on any game drive I have been on to date. A Leopard was sitting on the side of the road!! These amazing cats are rarely seen and usually seen from a distance in a tree so even Willard was shaking with excitement. We all had a look through the binoculars and then took a chance in driving closer. Expectantly the Leopard moved, but amazingly he just moved to the side of the road and sat about 1.5 m from the road and we stopped along side and got to be in the presence of this elusive cat. He got up and walked, we moved he let us be really close again - it was amazing! The other truck out on a game drive melted rubber getting to us and thankfully made it before he disappeared. My start to Thanda has been a blessed one, now I just need to pray that one does not eat me.