The new year started with some good news and we are very proud to announce that Pondoro has been nominated for a Good Safari Guide Award (2009) in the following categories: Best Safari Property, South Africa Best Lodge Guiding Team Best Safari Cuisine Nominations are accepted only from experienced African travel specialists (operators, agents, travel journalists). Nominations will continue to be accepted until the 10th of March 2009. Winners will be chosen based purely on numbers of nominations from the industry and from the panel of judges. Pondoro managed to secure another 2000ha of traversing and this will help to improve our game viewing even more. Pondoro has also just launched its own Blog which can be accessed through our Website. The blog will also be complimentary to the Rangers diary as the best videos of every month taken by Pondoro guides will be featured here. Videos taken by guests that stayed at Pondoro during December are currently showing on the blog. This includes sensational footage of a big male lion charging at guests while they were on a walking safari and also a lioness fighting with a honey badger. To see this go to www.pondoro.co.za and click on 'Videos taken by guests during game drives'. Game viewing in January was good with several highlights. On the evening of the 7th of January while Shaun was tracking lions they came upon a herd of about 40 buffalo. They stopped to have a look at 2 big buffalo bulls fighting, when the spotlight fell upon 7 young male lions stalking this group of buffaloes. They then chased the buffalo right past the vehicle and manage to catch a buffalo calf. To see the video of them killing the calf and fighting each other visit www.pondoro.co.za and click on 'Videos taken by rangers during game drives'. On the 9th guests saw lions hunting zebra (see video). A Breeding herd of about 20 elephants was seen swimming in Dead End Dam on the 10th of January (see video). 3 Lionesses were seen feeding on a giraffe kill on the 11th and 12th of January. A mother cheetah with 4 cubs were also seen on the 28th. We would also like to thank Geoff Calmeyer who stayed at Pondoro from 30 December - 1 January for his 4th time and Richard Broadley who was here on his 3rd visit and stayed with us from 21-25 January. During Saturday Ps: Ntombi our tame mongoose gave birth to an incredible 9 babies in my bed during Saturday night, the 17th of January. I am happy to report that they are all doing well. All photographs were taken by Robbie Prehn during Jan 2009 while on game drive with guests.