The One Leopard You're Guaranteed to See at Little Leadwood

Let's be honest about leopards.

In the Greater Kruger, one of the most remarkable wildlife destinations on the planet, the leopard is the one animal that humbles even the most experienced of us. You can spend a month on the Rietspruit Game Reserve and never find one. You can also come around a bend on Sandsloot Pad at dusk and have one stare at you from the road for thirty seconds before vanishing into the bush as if it was never there at all.

They are, in the truest sense, on their own terms.

So, we decided early on. If the real thing wasn't going to cooperate, we'd commission our own.

On the south-western deck at Little Leadwood, framed by one of our signature knobthorn trees, stands a life-size metal sculpture of a female leopard. She's extraordinarily well-made - the type that stops people mid-sentence on their first walk into our outdoor living space.

At certain times of day, when the light hits the sculpture at just the right angle, she looks close enough to real that we have done a double-take more than once. And we take a quiet satisfaction in that every single time.

What makes her position so perfect is the view behind her. Looking south from that deck, the land opens towards the Drakensberg Mountains, with the entrance to the Blyde River Canyon (the world's third largest, and most spectacular) just visible on the horizon. It's the kind of backdrop where this sculpture belongs.

Our locally crafted leopard sculpture with the Drakensberg Mountain backdrop

Our leopard has become part of the character of Little Leadwood. She appears in more of our friends' camera rolls than most of the actual wildlife, which we find quietly funny.

But she also serves as a useful reminder. The real leopards are out there. We've heard the rasping calls that give away their location in the dark. We've seen the alarm calls ripple through the impala herds and the boisterous baboons in a direction that points, every time, to something unseen moving through the African bush.

At our private safari villa on the Leadwood Big Game Estate, the leopard is always present. Sometimes in metal, beautifully lit by the late afternoon sun. Sometimes, if you are lucky, in real life with the quality of stillness that follows such a graceful predator.

Both versions are worth your full attention.