When I arrived in Africa in mid-January, I wrote to my friend Oliver that I felt a strange familiarity, a sense of calm and gratitude that I hadn’t felt in previous travels, even to the land of my grandparents.

My time at Siyafunda Endangered Species Reserve has come to a close. And my final hours were as amazing as my first.

There’s a family reunion at Jackelberry Dam. We humans weren’t invited, so we didn’t know.

Driving over bush yesterday morning to find the lions, we all catch the exquisite scent in the air. Our new friend from Zurich, Adrian, sweeps the air into his nose.

We arrived at 6 a.m. just as the pride seemed to be finishing up its meal. Before I go on, perhaps a warning is in order: this blog will be real, which means graphic.

I saw her. And that makes five. The Big Five. Elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo and, finally, the leopard.

It was about 2007 and my girls had just come home from dance. Theresa was in high school, Catherine, middle school.

We set out on foot at 5:45 a.m. for our morning game monitoring exercise. We were headed into the woods looking for one of the Big 5.

Not too shabby for the first day. Our small group of volunteers saw four out of the Big Five animals of Africa on our first day during two separate game drives.