The lion's share

Some days you just get the feeling that you might as well go home now, there is just no way it can get any better. This was one of those mornings... and we didn't even see elephants!

Yesterday, heading back to camp we encountered a young lioness walking down the road, checking out the waterbucks very thoroughly. We were hoping to be able to spot her this morning as well and that last night's rain would make her easy to track. However, there was no sign of her.

 

The three new, young lionesses have spread out in the lower parts of the reserve and the young male, who was brought in with them, has abandoned them in favour of the two older lionesses. Not an all together bad move on his part, I might add...

Driving down a dirt road with no tracks of other vehicles is a great feeling and there were lots of other kinds tracks everywhere... mostly antelopes and zebras though, our cat searched seemed to be in vain. As we came on to one of the larger plains, our ranger, Adriaan, remarked that there was an eerie emptiness to the place... And a few hundred metres later, we discovered the reason...

During the night or early morning hours the two experienced lionesses had managed to bring down a zebra, as well as a wildebeest... whose relatives and friends weren't about to hang around and watch the feast; thereof all the tracks leading out of there. If I was a lion, I'd also ditch the younger ones and join the two who know what they're doing, bringing down breakfast, lunch and dinner in one go.

Curiously, the male didn't seem to have eaten yet and was resting in the shade some distance away from the females. One of them was still feeding, while the other kept an watchful eye on four hopeful black-backed jackals that nervously kept their distance in wait of their chance. I'm not too sure the jackals needed worrying about the females though, as they both looked like they had chucked down their own body weight in meat and about to trip on their own bellies and fall over.

Suddenly the females moved up into the shade further away, probably because they were about to burst. My mind immediately went to memories and fantasies of Christmas dinner back home...  

 

One of them had been drinking a lot of blood and I almost expected the urine to be pink as she relieved herself before joing her companien under a tree.

 

The male also decided to move, so he stood up and roared once before walking towards the zebra carcass. We were hoping he'd decided it was his turn, but he walked right passed it. Maybe he just wanted to be closer to his new-found girl friends.  

Now the jackals moved in on the two enormous meals and there definately was plenty to go around. Yet, they managed to find a reason to fight over the meat! Portion control guys!

 

Jackals are opportunistic and highly intelligent, but skittish, creatures, so they don't often let you get very nice photographs. This time, they didn't care whether they had a bad hair day however and stayed still long enough to have pictures taken.

 

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Sneaky bastards

I often remind others of the great dangers of the bush... that is monkeys and mice stealing your food, soap or mosquito repellent! Keep an eye on your food, lock it away safely and close all windows and doors and, for God's sake, zip up your tent!

 

Having breakfast in the bush, someone is always watching you, eagerly waiting for you to loose focus for half a second. They really don't need more time than that!

Me and Desiré even went to the bathroom in shifts, so that we wouldn't have to store everything away and zip up our tents all the time. On one of my shifts I noticed a banded mongoose about twenty metres away and decided to try and get a photo of it. Biiiig mistake! I was standing right outside the food tent, but since my focus was elsewhere, a vervet monkey, swift as a swallow, jumped in, stole our bread and was gone again in 2 seconds... It dropped the bag after having been chased up into a tree and the whole troop came running for the scattered slices. Furious about my stupidity and tomorrow morning's probable starvation, I gathered most of the bread and threw it in the bin. Only two slices survived the vervets' rough handling!

 

One afternoon, after a game drive, we saw a bunch of mongooses running off as we approached our camp. Then we noticed that the bedroom tent had been opened about 10 cm. Odd, since we stored neither valuables nor food there. However, we did have a first aid kit... Apparently even mongooses have ailments that require urgent treatment.

They'd opened up the tent just enough, got in and stolen anti-inflammatories, as well as allergex blister packs! We found a couple of them around the camp site, but one of the allergex packs was missing and one third of an anti-inflammatory tablet had been eaten; they at least seem to have got the dosage correct! One of our neighbours remarked that he must have been quite surprised to find that his bad knee didn't bother him anymore...

 

After all this, we got two wires that we twined the two zips closed with... and thought we were really smart. 

 

The enigma was the missing allergexes... but that one was solved the very next day. After another drive in Mapungubwe, the tablets had miraculously found their way back, lying in plain view, in the middle of the camp site. We figured that the mongooses realized they actually didn't need them and dropped them in the bush, as they scurried off. The vervet monkeys must have found the shiny package interesting and climbed our Nyala tree and up there found out that these things weren't very tasty and just dropped them... or maybe as an apology for the stolen bread..?

Happy about our find, we opened up the tents, expecting them to be untouched. Inside the food tent though, there was a small little chaos waiting for us; boxes had been chewed through and there were bits and pieces of them everywhere! Playing detectives, we soon came to the conclusion that a squirrel had been the third visitor and that it had chewed its way in, through the canvas and the mosquito net. Why on earth it didn't eat the tomatoes or the cereal instead of cardboard however remains an unsolved mystery.

Apparently third time's a charm and we didn't have any more sneaky creatures rummaging through our temporary home. Luckily we managed quite well without all the bread, tablets and... cardboard?!

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Into the Wild

As I had never been to the far northern part of Limpopo, me and Desiré decided to rectify this wrong and at the same time put her new vehicle to the test. Turning north from Polokwane, I entered into the wild, land previously unexplored... well, by me, that is. Crossing the Tropic of Capricorn and soon thereafter Soutpansberg, more and more Baobabs showed up and the feeling of being in the true African bush intensified.

Closing in on Mapungubwe we soon came upon a road block, or rather a road gap. The area had experienced some flooding recently and as a result, many bridges had been washed away. This forced us to take a detour on corrugated gravel roads through tomato farms with waving farm workers.

Back on track the sun began to set and gave the landscape the magical golden shimmer I love so much. Reaching our camp in Mapungubwe National Park, we quickly set up camp as darkness was falling around us and started the braai. Happily we sipped some white wine, listened to the cicadas and looked at the stars, while the chicken kebabs took forever on the grid.

  

When we finally went to bed, expecting to be lulled by the usual night concert of the wild, we were amused as well as annoyed to find that our closest neighbour snored like there was no tomorrow! We cursed our choice of camp site, but the next morning we realized that the small size of the camping grounds made it impossible to be out of hearing range. Desiré quickly got her earplugs out and thanks to the long road trip and all the fresh air we both managed to fall asleep within minutes.

 

Despite the human(?) noices, the camp was frequented by a number of creatures, in search of food, water and protection, making. Especially a bushbuck female and young made themselves comfortable just a few metres away, from right after dinner until after we'd had breakfast.

 

...not having any earplugs actually turned out to be pretty great, as both lions and hyenas vocalized their presence in the early morning hours.

A few nights later the whole camp was joking about the snorer, who turned out to be a very nice guy and a valuable ice-buying neighbour. In spite of this, Desiré and one of the other campers had some rather advanced ideas as how to make the snoring disappear... one of which included a treed, and supposedly hungry, Genet!

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Highveld flight

Back in  Gauteng, after a week in the lowveld, I was unexpectedly invited to go flying with my friend's daughter, Cassandra. She is allowed to bring two passengers with her in the four-seated Cessna. I gladly accepted and at eight o'clock the next morning, we left for the airport.

After the safety controls had been carried out, we swiftly took to the skies. Ascending we were informed that there were no barf bags on board, but as I was to excited, I didn't really pay that piece of information much interest at this point.

 

We soon passed by the skyline of Pretoria and shortly thereafter, Cullinan diamond mine, which is where the largest gem stone quality diamond in the world (Star of Africa, 621 g) was discovered, in 1905.

Heading eastward, the ride soon started to get rather bumpy and I was glad I wasn't the only passenger, as that would have made me the dedicated map reader. I was amazed that Cassandra's colleague, Craig, didn't seem to be showing any signs of motion sickness at all, though he had an eye on the map during the whole flight. Meanwhile I was starting to get a bit worried about the no barf bag-situation and concentrating really hard not to have to use the cooler bag instead...

In spite of my predicament I enjoyed the views of fields, rivers and mountains rushing by, but was glad when Wonderboom airport yet again came into view. Afterwards, our pilot confessed to having been affected by the bumpiness as well this day, something which definitely made me feel a little better... as did some home baked treats and half a litre of water.

 

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Love in the Lowveld

When it comes to lions, I've mentioned a few times earlier that they usually aren't very exciting to watch, as their most common activity is sleeping.

Once in a while you're just in the right place at the right time though, as we were this spring afternoon, when love was in the air...

We found the three lions close by one of the dams and every few minutes one of the lionesses got up and did her best to entice the male, with the expected response. The other lioness decided to respectfully keep a few metres distance and relaxed in the shade of our vehicle, to everyone's delight.

Afterwards, I must say, she seemed rather pleased with her achievement. They would continue with this activity on average every twenty minutes for about five days.

A couple of nights later, neither of them seemed very interested in mating any longer though, but nevertheless dutifully kept to their routine.

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Chilled to the bone

As I arrived to South Africa for the first tour of the season, I was told that it's been unseasonably hot lately; something which I was of course looking forward to. The group of nine guests received these news with mixed emotions though as they had booked a springtime safari to avoid the heat.

Descending to the lowveld I eagerly kept an eye on the bus's thermometre, as the numbers got higher and higher and by six o'clock that evening had reached a pleasant 25 degrees. As the night progressed however the temperature kept getting lower. Next morning as we met for the first game drive it was a frozen bunch sipping coffee to warm up. We slowly thawed in the sun... only to realize that the evening was going to be clear, with a perfect starry African sky, meaning that the upcoming night would be even cooler!

It was 2 degrees that night, in a tent without heating! I woke up at three, unable to move my legs, as they had warmed up one spot and the rest of the bed was unbearably cold to touch. After contemplating the situation for a few minutes I rushed out of bed and fetched some extra clothes and towels. With towels on top of the duvet and pillows all around me under it, I soon went back to sleep, dressed in knee-high socks.

But as the days went by, the temperature increased again to a pleasant 30, and a week later when the guests had left, to a boiling 39.

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Flying high

I have always wanted to fly in a hot air balloon and when I got the opportunity about a month ago, I of course jumped at the chance.

One early mid-winter morning at Entabeni I was woken up by a phone call from the balloon pilot, to be informed that there was a spot available, if I could get there within half an hour! Urgently I phoned the general manager to get a ride to the take-off spot at the lodge Hanglip, on the other side of the reserve. I was told I didn't wake him up, but I'm pretty sure I did...

 

It was still pitch black outside with a temperature of around zero degrees. As we were driving through the reserve I questioned the sense of doing this in winter. It took us a bit more than half an hour from the phone call until arrival, but fortunately they had waited for me. I climbed into the basket and got the very short version of the safety brief.

Soon we were taking off and I was surprised to find that it was rather warm and cosy as the warm air doesn't only fill up the balloon... so, hot air ballooning on a cold morning is actually a good idea!

Sunrise in the bush is always stunning and from the air even more so. The mountains looked like they were on fire and the mist was rising from the dams... how can you ever want to be anywhere else?!

The wind had changed direction, so we weren't going east as planned. Slowly we travelled west and even though that wasn't according to schedule, we saw elephants drinking in the distance. For me, it couldn't have been planned better!

 

Unfortunately they did look up at the funny huge object and decided they didn't like what they were seeing and hence took off into the bush. The matriarch stopped for a while, stood tall and shook her head at us, before following the others. It's hard to spot them in the photo, but I promise, they're there, along the river.

A lot of impalas, waterbuck and kudus were also spotted, as well as something that we finally agreed on must have been a duiker. We also came across a game viewer with some of my guests in it and from the excessive waving and shouting that was going on, I gathered that it could only be my core group - the crazy A-team!

We eventually landed in a field just outside the game reserve. The cows that were grazing there weren't as alert as the wild animals and they didn't really notice us until we were about ten metres above them, but then they got a bit of a fright and quickly moved away.

We were also welcomed by two farm workers that came running, grinning and chatting away in Afrikaans. Even though only one person in the group knew the language, I think we all understood exactly what they were saying... they were amazed by the balloon and excited to finally seeing one up close! I don't think that any trespassers have ever received a warmer welcome.

After the flight, we naturally had some sparkling wine and got diplomas. We were all happy (and some of us also starving!) as we made our chilly journey back to Hanglip for breakfast.

 

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Too close for comfort?

Normally you try to avoid driving up too close to the animals, as not to disturb their natural behaviour, but that of course doesn't stop them from approaching you to investigate. When these gigantic creatures stop just a metre or two from your vehicle usually one can hear the entire group of guests taking a deep breath... and hold it.

This female elephant has no problem at all closing in on you to have a good look. This time around she stood there contemplating us for a while, until she finally was convinced by our ranger, to walk away. Speaking calmly to elephants may have the effect that they realize that you're not of any threat to them and then go about their own business again.

Another day we had the fortune of bumping into a female rhino with her calf walking along the road. As they went into the bush we continued on the road ahead. Of course, the huge lady changed her mind and decided that the road was the best mode of travelling after all. As she has no road sense, she just cut in front of us... not even signalling before doing so! A close encounter that probably even startled her.

I was amazed by her climbing skills, as she came up the dam wall onto the road again! Standing three metres above a rhino, on a steep bank, is apparently not a safe spot! Her calf struggled a bit before also making it and then quickly running in front of her, true white rhino style.

Crocodiles ususally head for water as soon as you get close enough for decent photos. But this fellow was probably soaking up the last warmth of the afternoon from the sandy track and so had no intention to budge, not even a little.

This caused a bit of a traffic jam with three vehicles getting stuck on the dam wall, enjoying his company for a while, before having to turn around the same way as we came.

 

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Misty mornings

Winter in South Africa is always a bit of a shock, even though you've experienced it before. Most houses in South Africa aren't really made for winters, as their real winter is only two months long or something like that... as if it's ok to freeze your butt off for 15-20% of your life!? You learn to dress quickly in the mornings though and I'm starting to understand the idea of always wearing shoes indoors, but of course, I also brought my slippers, like a proper grandma.

The early mornings in the bush are wonderfully still and beautiful in the mist. The frost in the grass however gives you an indication that game drives at 6:30 in open vehicles may be a bit chilly... though I was told it hasn't been really cold yet while I've been here, as the temperature only dropped to about -4 one night... I usually get frost bites when it drops below +25!

A game drive is however always a game drive and it's one of very few activities I'll gladly get up before daybreak and accept being frozen solid for. As the sun rises you'd expect the air to warm up, but this is actually the coldest time of the day..!

Some mornings, I could have sworn that even the animals had had enough of the cold and were hibernating in their nests... especially the lions and the elephants! The afternoon drives were less of a slap in the face with a bag of ice cubes and we were treated with some really good elephant and cheetah sightings.

On the day of departure, after a week at Entabeni, a small group among my guests hadn't yet seen any lions and they were crossing all fingers available, as we headed out for one last morning drive. Fortunately there were other groups out on the same mission and with combined effort, the southern side of the reserve was combed through. There were tracks all over the place and eventually one of the rangers struck gold. Of course, we made our way there in a heartbeat.

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Big 5 marathon

This past weekend, more than 300 crazy people from all over the world had decided that running around in a Big 5 area was a great idea. Most of them ran a full marathon, others “only” a half... but they all had to climb up and down the dreaded 2.2 km long Yellowwood road... which is a 500 m climb! As if this wasn't enough, deep sand and wobbly stones made the route a challenge, even when there weren't any hills.

The previous day we had all been driven around the track on route inspection; 42 km took 3 hours! Needless to say, I was pretty thankful that the 2 month flu I had had, actually had made me sane. I'm afraid I would have been among the crazy ones otherwise! Instead, I was positioned at the start and finish line taking photos etc... though I must say that I did feel my legs twitch a bit as the herd raced off.

On route inspection we had seen a lot of wildlife and some people had been a bit concerned, especially regarding elephants and rhinos...

As the last runners were struggling with the soft sand at the lower escarpment, they were blissfully unaware of the lions closing in on them. Luckily, the cats stopped a few hundred metres away, but still, that information might have made them hurry up Yellowwood a bit faster. At the very end, only 1 km from the finish line, a herd of elephants also made their approach. This time however, a runner spotted the animals and ran back to the nearest ranger for protection. Seems to have been a rather great race actually and all the runners were very happy and many said it was their favourite marathon so far. Next year... maybe!

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Entabeni

As you drive into Entabeni game reserve, the huge rock that towers above the upper plains comes into view. Though I've been there three times this season, but it's still a sight that fills me with joy... maybe it's the hibernating geologist in me that stirs at the sight?

Usually there is also plenty of antelopes and other game grazing in the area, really perfecting the picture.

The altitude of the upper section of the reserve is a few hundred metres higher than the lower and therefore also a bit chillier, with misty mornings... almost romantically so some days.

Travelling down the 2 km long Yellowwood road the first time is an exhilarating experience and I always get the urge to throw myself off the highest cliff and soar like an eagle down into the valley below. However, since my flying abilities are more like those of a penguin, it will have to wait..? Not all the guests were impressed with the road and actually complained that the bush is too uncomfortable and bumpy!

With this view though, comfort is not the priority I would say.

Descending out of the mist into the more varied vegetation of the lower section, the scenery changes dramatically. Water lily filled dams truly make the beautiful background of the escarpment justice.

As you go up to the plains again, you can't always see more than a couple of metres of the road in front of you, which is rather disconcerting at night, as anything may show up in the dark. One night, as we were making our way back up along the steepest part of Yellowwood, a wildebeest surprised us on the narrow road, but maybe not as much as we surprised him.

I thought he would have a heart attack as he froze for a second in the bright headlights of the game viewer, before rushing past us down hill with gravel flying around him as he went... making MY heart skip a beat.

On a late evening ascent we came across a fairly sluggish puffadder at the top. Guests often ask about snakes and whether they are common, but this was actually my first sighting at Entabeni, on the last drive of the season!

In the cool night, the slow moving serpent was of course the centre of attention while flashes cut through the night, before making our way to a braai under the starry African night sky.

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