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South Africa and Lesotho Day 9: Safari!

3 March 2026 • 216 km / 134 mi (map)

Added to Eric Scouten :: Travel on 2 April 2026
South Africa 10

No trip to South Africa is complete without a big-game safari adventure and so, of course, we made time for one! We set forth from Cape Town this morning for the 2½-hour drive to the arid Karoo region.

Now here is a road sign we don’t see back home:

A green road sign mounted on wooden posts beside a highway, reading “VOER VAN BOBBEJANE VERBODE” in Afrikaans above “FEEDING OF BABOONS PROHIBITED” in English, set against a steep hillside covered in dense green shrubs and trees with a metal guardrail and grey tarmac in the foreground.

south of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Our safari was at the Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, which is tastefully set into the surrounding desert landscape.

A sandy dirt road bordered by stone-edged garden beds full of cacti, aloes, succulents and silvery shrubs leads toward a low white flat-roofed building under a clear deep-blue sky. Tall trees and palms cluster on the left, with low desert hills visible in the distance.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

We arrived in the early afternoon and were invited to settle in and relax in our lodge before setting out on our first game drive. (The animals, it would seem, tend to lounge about in the mid-day heat, so best to do the same!)

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

At 5pm, we were summoned to the main reception to get into the jeeps? trucks? (not sure what to call them) for our tour of the grounds. Note the subtle green color; this allows the vehicles to blend in with the surrounding vegetation.

An open-sided khaki safari vehicle with tiered bench seating and a canvas roof parked on a sandy track, with a spare tire mounted at the rear and a second similar vehicle in the background. Aloe plants and silvery scrubland surround the scene under a deep blue cloudless sky, with low hills on the horizon.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Play the next video for a sense of what the jeep adventure is like … that clatter and bump would be our lives for the next two hours or so as we drove around in search of the animals.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

An open-sided safari vehicle carrying several passengers drives through a vast expanse of low scrubland dotted with green bushes and reddish soil, with rugged, layered mountains rising in the hazy background under a clear sky.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

First up, lions!

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A male lion with a thick tawny mane rests on the ground amid dry grass and green bushes, looking directly toward the camera in dappled afternoon light at a game reserve.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A maned male lion stands snarling over a reclining lioness who lies on the sandy ground with her mouth open, the two interacting in a dry scrubland dotted with green and brown bushes in late afternoon light.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

So … ummm … yes, it’s mating season. And they got busy shortly after the above photo. This being a family-rated show, we’ll skip ahead a couple minutes, where we find them back to lounging about:

A lioness lies stretched out and resting on dry ground in the shade of bushes and a weathered tree stump, her head turned away and front paws extended, with late-afternoon sunlight catching her tawny coat. Green scrub and tangled branches frame the scene in this arid reserve landscape.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

While off in search of the next animals, I captured this picture which nicely captures the essence of the Karoo: loose vegetation and always mountains in the distance.

A wide, arid Karoo plain dotted with low scrub bushes and scattered reddish stones under a vast clear blue sky, with a low range of bluish mountains stretching across the distant horizon.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Next up, rhinos! You’ll notice the horns are missing. This is done to protect the animals from poachers.

Two white rhinos with dehorned snouts walk through a dry scrubland of low green and brown bushes, grazing with their heads lowered. Rugged mountains rise across the horizon under a clear pale blue sky in the late afternoon light.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A white rhinoceros stands head-on in dry, dusty terrain, its horn appearing trimmed or blunted near the base. Late-afternoon light highlights the deep folds of its thick gray skin against a backdrop of scrubby vegetation.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A lone giraffe walks across a scrubby semi-desert plain at dusk, its silhouette dark against a vast clear blue sky, with flat-topped hills on the horizon behind it.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa · by Lisa Rozmyn

A Cape buffalo with large curving horns and a heavy boss stands behind a low earthen rise, lit by warm late-afternoon sun, with dense green thornbush and trees filling the background.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A close-up of several Cape buffalo crowded together in dusty light, their large curved horns and heavy dark bodies dominating the frame as fine dust drifts in the backlit air. Green bushes and bright sky show behind them at the edge of the herd.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A small herd of African buffalo crossing a sparse, semi-arid plain dotted with low scrub, one buffalo walking apart from the others, with flat-topped mountains and hills on the horizon under a clear pale blue sky in late afternoon light.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A small group of zebras standing among low green scrub on a dry, hilly grassland in late afternoon light, two facing each other in the foreground while another grazes to the right.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A giraffe lowers its long neck to browse on dry shrubs in golden late-afternoon light, with scrubby bushland and bare-branched trees behind it under a pale blue sky.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Having seen most of the animals that we would for this evening, we took a moment to step out of the vehicle (safely away from any of the dangerous animals) for a light snack and glass of wine before heading back to the local watering hole for the night.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A wide arid desert plain at dusk, with rocky, stony reddish-brown ground in the foreground and low scrubby bushes leading to a silhouetted mountain range on the horizon. The clear sky shifts from soft orange and yellow near the horizon to deep blue above.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

A blue wildebeest with curved horns and a dark mane grazes on a pile of dry and green grass beside a water hole, with scrubby green bushes lining the bank behind it in evening light.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

Oh, silly … when I said watering hole, I meant literally watering hole, where we would find our last animal for the evening. Hippos spend most of the daylight hours underwater. They surface every 5-7 minutes to breathe and manage to do so without losing sleep. As night falls, they emerge to graze overnight. We timed our visit for the twilight hours when they are just coming out of the water.

A large hippopotamus grazing on low silvery-green shrubs at dusk, surrounded by dense bushveld vegetation and dry tangled branches in the fading evening light.

Inverdoorn Private Game Reserve, northeast of Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa

It’s rare these days that I need to use my big camera gear, but today I was thankful for a long lens. We were kept at quite a distance from the hippo, who we were told would kill anyone who dared to venture near or into the nearby pond. They don’t eat people, but they do not like intruders.

We all obeyed the orders to stay in the truck and made it back safely to that other watering hole 😉 for dinner and drinks.

What a way to celebrate a birthday!

Cape Town to Ceres, Western Cape, South Africa · 216 km / 134 mi
(Mouse over or tap on the markers to see the photos there. Use the

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South Africa and Lesotho Day 10: Safari, Part 2 →

← South Africa and Lesotho Day 8: Thaba Bosiu