It's eight hours from Johannesburg ...up through the mountains, down through the town of Sabie, and then onto Sabie Sands, a large area adjacent to the Southwest corner of Kruger National Park.  Sabie Sands is made up of a number of private game reserves.  Lion Sands is over 3500 hectares inside of Sabie Sands.Once upon a time the game reserves were separated from Kruger by large game fences, which since the liberation of South Africa have now come down.  All animal species are free to travel back and forth between Kruger and the reserves within the Sabie Sands quadrant.  Lion sand is a reserve known for its dense population.of Leopards and other members of the Big Five. continued below...

The country reminded me ...
of the Texas Hill Country with rough, high elevations, rocky terrain and winding, twisting rivers all wrapped within dense bush, cactus, and large trees.  Here, while the land bears the name of Lions, there are not a great number of lions in the area. There are a couple of prides, one we watched for a couple of days was without a pride leader or King because he had been killed, but not replaced.  I heard a couple of different stories about his death, one was that he confronted a couple of males from a competing pride and they killed him and the other was that he was killed when he was cornered by a few of the large Cape Buffalo bulls in the area.  On our first evening there, we drove down not far from the Sabie River, where there was still pools and ponds of water, and watched a herd of over 400 Cape Buffalo march in straight line file to the river at dusk. 

There are also large numbers... of Nyala, Impala, Kudu’s, and other antelope species.  The browsing antelope species.  There are also troops of Baboons, and large numbers of Vervet monkeys in the area.