20 October 2008-10-20 Back Home—The Financial Crisis

A week back at home and into the groove, does not take long does it? Fortunately for me I am not overly busy right now and have been able to slip back into things smoothly without any stress.

Actually it has been a lovely week, apart from the fact that it is always nice to come home and I have been enjoying pottering around the house and garden it is just such a gorgeous time of year.

We really do live in paradise here in SA.

The Jacarandas are in full bloom (beautiful deep lilac blossom), all the other various blossoms are out, pinks, blues, reds, purples, orange and yellows amongst others, the birds are all singing, the veldt is alive with the sound of the oncoming summer and the evenings are warm and balmy.

The first bit of rain came on Friday evening which has cooled everything down and left a fresh crispness in the air and virtually overnight the grass has developed a greenness that offsets all the colours on the trees and shrubs beautifully, the smells are exquisite.

Although not particularly busy at work right now I have had a busy week putting all my pictures from the October trip together. Jeez!!…it’s a lot of work to deal with over 800 shots. Hardly work for me though as I thoroughly enjoy it, but quite time consuming all the same. Anyway, I finally got through them all and ended up putting over 300 pics onto the site. I suppose there are probably about 20 to 30 that I am fairly happy with which is not too bad, but only a handful that I am delighted with….Oh well the next trip up there is booked for December/January so I will just have to go and practise some more!!

The next thing I need to do is learn how to convert all the video footage I have taken and upload that onto the site. I have glanced through some of it, and on this last trip especially, I am quite happy with what I managed to get.

Meanwhile the world is in turmoil it seems…

So what’s new? Call it dark humour if you like, but quite frankly I find it all quite hilarious. Am I honestly expected to believe that this ‘financial crisis’ has just happened? Pelleeease….Leave it out!!

It is all controlled and manipulated.

I guess I find it hilarious because it is better to laugh rather than to cry, but the fact is everything that is occurring currently totally highlights just how rotten the systems are.

I understand that the ‘governments’ around the world are having to try and save the situation, they have no choice, but at the end of the day all they are doing is bailing out all the very people who have screwed up in the first place. I heard a comment from someone who compared the actions of the various governments as giving the drunks another bottle to keep them quiet…well said I reckon.

What about all the unfortunate folk who have been mercilessly thrown out of their homes….by the same people who are being bailed…..can they now go to government and claim help? I don’t think so.

Somehow, as much as I do understand that the situation needs to be saved, it is difficult to get away from the thought that the whole shooting match is fundamentally sick.

Billions and billions of pounds and dollars, at the click of the finger relatively speaking, are being thrown at the problem in the hope of rescuing this sorry state of affairs.
All this, presumably, spare money, yet approximately 90% of the world’s population lives on or under the poverty line with poor education, poor health care and little prospect of escaping their plight.

Meanwhile many of the very people who have screwed up in the first place are now, today, making small fortunes out of the volatility of it all!

As I say, fundamentally sick, unfair, unjust and wrong….please don’t try to tell me that we live in a civilised society, it is nowhere near it. In fact, I would hazard a guess and say that in the great curve of time, mankind today is barely out of the crèche.
In time to come, we, the people of today, will probably be looked upon in the same light as that in which we, the people of today, look back on the darkness of the middle ages .

That said I’ll move on, not for me to fret over things I can do nothing about….and anyway, the sun came up again this morning.

My last morning and i had opted to drive down to Matjulu and sit for a couple of hours before packing up camp, showering and hitting the road home.

I was up very early before 4.00am and surprised to hear some birds chirping in the darkness, not sure what species they were though. Then as the grey light of dawn approached all the others started waking up and singing their early morning dawn chorus….beautiful.

Much better than the noise last night it has to be said. Being so close to the southern borders of the park Berg N Dal is a favourite for locals who pull in for the weekend with their families. Lovely people i am sure, but far too noisy for me and it reminded me of why i prefer going up to the north.

I had to laugh though, they were all braaing and most were drinking i guess, so when i was woken at 1.30 this morning it sounded a bit like i was camped in the middle of a pod of hippos!!….snoring , indigestion noises, someone was barfing and endless traipses to the loo. As i say, i did see the funny side and in a way it was quite interesting!!…not that i want to repeat the experience too often.

So, after a fairly disturbed night i was up and about and up at the gate way too early.As much as i was enjoying the birds waking up in the valley where the campsite is there were still quite a few snorers around and as the gate is on top of the hill it was more pleasant sitting up on ‘my’ rock, fewer birds but plenty of song nonetheless.

I drove straight round to Matjulu where i parked up for a couple of hours after watching the sun rise from a high point further back on the track with a couple of Kudu feeding off the bushes to my immediate right. I was hoping to get some shots of the sun while it was still ‘pink’ in the sky but the horizon did not allow it, unfortunately the hills and koppies were not ideally placed, or should i say that i was not ideally placed amongst them. All the same it is still a very sensuous experience to be high on a dirt track surrounded by bush and granite koppies, the stillness is palpable.

Not too much going on at the water hole apart from various birds in the bushes, but it was lovely to enjoy the glory of my surrounds in the early morning dawning, the sun did not get onto the waterhole until past 6.30 am due to a large koppie in the way so it was an extended dawn for me. I could see various spoor from the night though including those of a smallish herd of elephant…maybe about 7 or 8.

There was one highlight, seeing two lilac breasted rollers ‘procreating’. The noises!!….it made me think of humans…and they went at it for a good minute!! Afterwards the male just flew away and the female sat on the branch motionless for a full five minutes. I am sure there must of been some kind of relationship though that preceded the ‘proceedings’….

Back to camp soon after 8.00am, my last breakfast…which funnily enough was not so lekker…and i knew it was time to go home.

An hours sleep, packed the tent up, showered and drove down to the bridge over the crocodile river where i sat for a half hour or so before getting underway at 11.44am. It was great viewing however, there must of been a shoal of fish around as there was about ten crocs, a goliath heron, blue crane, Hammerkop and a few others fishing for breakfast and catching plenty.

It is strange to leave the park at first, for the first few kilometres it seems ridiculously fast to be travelling over 50kph and it takes a while to get used to it…80 kph for a while before eventually creeping up to 100 and then 120kph after about 20 klicks.
Driving through Nelspruit after about 55 klicks it seemed absurdly slow to be driving at 60 kph!!

There is stunning flora in the lowveld around Nelspruit just bursting out into colour at this time of year, bright cerise, oranges, reds, yellows and of course the beautiful deep lilac of the Jacarandas. Sixty Klicks or so through the Elands valley with all its historic sites from the last hundred years and more, rising up and through the tunnel to Machadodorp, onto Belfast, and into the cooler air of the Highveld. Four hundred klicks and i was home just before 4.00pm in just over 4 hours.

Strange though it may seem i am looking forward to getting back to work on Monday, a couple of good months and back up to the park for at least a month if not six weeks.

Ngiyabonga Sibongile Mashaba ngokungisiza ekushitsheni indawo yami yokuhlala ungise kwenconywana ungumuntu olungile ngempela.

Sala Kahle

The afternoon of day 10 and i am sitting at the Matjulu water hole in the hills at the very south of the park. Strangely enough i have just heard a couple of low key ‘whoops’ from a nearby Hyaena, i can’t say i have ever heard them in the daytime before!!??

Not much going on here at the moment, the occasional visitor to drink, couple of warthog just now, a lone elephant and of course the ever present birds, in this case, blue finches, glossy starlings, white fronted bee eaters, francolins, hammerkop, europaen rollers and more that i can hear and but not see clearly…as always a few various ‘little brown things’ whizzing around that are not so easy to identify.

Yesterday, day 9, turned out to be a brilliant viewing day, as it was the day when i had to drive back down to the south i kinda thought beforehand that it might not be so good for seeing things as i had a fair way to come, nearly 200 klicks, but it was fabulous viewing throughout the morning in particular.

Leaving satara camp just after 5.30 i had decided to stick to the tar road all the way down and then relax a bit after i had arrived.

First stop for a cup of coffee was on the bridge over the N’wanetsi and lo and behold, looking down just down on the right hand side where the river bends sharply to the left with a kind of confluence with a floodwater channel i see 4 young lion cubs playing as the sun rose. Beautiful to watch.

The cubs were probably about a year or more older so are starting to look and sound like lions but ‘puppy playful’. There were at least two lionesses on the bank behind some bushes but they seemed to be sleeping.

The young lions were fighting and growling with each other, slipping and sliding down the bank, standing up and pulling down young sapling trees and letting them go again like slingshots then trying to catch them again on the rebound…great fun to watch.

One could see the different characters amongst the four of them, one was clearly more naughty than the others with one nearly as bad, another was much quieter and laid back, the other seemed tro be doing what the others did just because they were.

Superb start to the day and i sat there for about 45 minutes until they moved off into the bush after one of the lionesses had got up and moved back deeper into the bushes. Hopefully i got a couple of good shots and definitely got some good footage.

Very shortly after moving on, probably not much more than a kilometre i came across a Ostrich couple walking along the road with 9 young chicks. I followed them for a couple of hundred metres, also lovely to see. The young ones were about the size of small chickens…it looked a bit like something out of a Walt Disney film.

Five klicks later i turned off onto the Sweni dirt track, there is a water hole just a few klicks along from the tar road ands i had seen a couple of lion there a couple of days ago so i thought i would have a quick look. Sure enough there were six lions there, including, i am sure, the mating couple i had seen previously.

They were quite far from me though on the ridge of the far bank but nice to see all the same so i had another coffee and sat for ten minutes or so before heading back to the tar toad and south again.

As i turned onto the road i saw a large troop of baboons just spreading out for a days foraging, i guess they had spent a night in one of the giant fig trees leaning over the Sweni. There were many, maybe as many as fifty with plenty of young ones, Spread out over more the 300 metres it was stunning to see as the rising sun which was just beginning to gain height and strength was shining onto the other side of them so that from my position it gave them each a sort of glowing golden syrupy kinda aura as they walked along.

Even though i had stopped a few times i was making good progress so i turned off again onto a dirt track that loops around the edge of the Nwaswitsonstso river which also proved to be a good move.

As i turned into the river i came across a whole load of animals eating fruit from a tree where another smaller troop of baboons were feeding and then dropping the fruit after one or two bites. I am not sure but i think they were Loquats, i will have to check on them also.

Amongst all the various buck were a couple of youngish, but fully grown bull Kudus that were locking horns and having a bit of a tussle…when you hear those horns clash it makes you realise just how dangerous these seemingly harmless animals are.

Another quite big bull elephant is just approaching the water hole here, i had better get back in the car for a while.

Well that was quite a moment…30 or 40 minutes in fact. The elephant was not so big as i first thought…but big enough, certainly 3 metres to his shoulder. As he was approaching i thought he looked quite irritable and menacing and i was right. I think he may of had a problem with his right front lower leg or pad as while he was drinking at the water hole he kept on squirting every other trunk full of water onto it.

He kept looking over at me and was clearly not a happy chappy. Also, although the water hole is about 30 metres over to my right, about 10 metres directly in front of me is a concrete water tank. Normally elephants choose to drink from these, maybe the water is sweeter or maybe it is because that apart from birds they are pretty much the only creatures that can get to them. When he first arrived he tasted the water in the water hole and then came straight over to the tank. It must be dry or shallow (the walls of the tank are about 3 metres high) and when he reached over with his trunk to get inside he came out empty. After walking around it a couple of times he went back to the waterhole where he had a good drink and splashed water over his foot. Then he turned again and came at me with his ears out. I must be honest and admit that i had a couple of nervous moments and actually started the car and reversed a metre or so to let him know that i was not interested in grief…to say the least!!!

While all this was going on three zebras came down to drink and as i reversed he turned and charged them off…brilliant to see and feel and experience but i missed the shot as i was too concerned for my own safety. I have been ‘mock’ charged by elephant before a few times and i can assure you it has to be one of the most frightening experiences that a person can have. The one time i came across a huge jumbo that must of been 4 metres to his shoulder and was in Musth…he just seemed to keep coming…it really gets the adrenaline going but i will eventually get around to writing about those experiences in my bush diary or bush talk sections.

This went on with the zebras for five minutes or so though so eventually i did get a couple of shots showing the elephant kicking up some dust as he went for them and there in the bottom of the pic you can see the zebras scampering away so i shall up load them shortly.

People wonder how i can have the patience to sit for hours at these place….moments like these are my answer!!

When i was watching the lion cubs yesterday morning there were a few other drivers who saw them, took a picture and then drove off…it always amazes me…people drive around for ages looking for lion and then when they find them they watch for a couple of minutes and drive off again, or if lion goes behind a bush they drive off straight away without waiting to see if they come back…invariably they miss the best parts and i am sure they cannot get a true sense of bushlife…certainly not in a sensuous way which for me is what it is largely all about. Some folk are so bad they may as well go to the zoo. I hear people say they have ‘done’ the bush…hah!…meanwhile they came for a few days, drove around with their windows closed in air conditioned cars and made a list of what they spotted. Oh well…it takes all sorts and each to their own. i guess it is not every bodys cup of tea.

Anyway, where was i…the kudus fighting with each other on the N’waswitsonso…also wonderful to see and you realise how powerful these creatures are when seen in action at close quarters.

I remember once i was driving in Hoedspruit with one of my managers following me in a volkswagon beetle. It was late in the evening and quite a dark moonless night (they don’t have street lights…lol) we were doing over a 100kph. A female kudu came from nowhere and he could not help but hit it full on. The kudu got straight up and ran off…for sure that must of been adrenalin and we suspect that it might of died later from its injuries it was such a serious collision, but the guys car looked more like a wedge shaped sports car then a beetle…it was a write off from an insurance point of view and they were very lucky to have survived themselves.

Back to yesterday again, i keep digressing, so many stories to tell.

I was really chuffed that i had taken the loop track by the N’waswitsontso…it turned out to teeming with baboons, kudu, impala, steenbok, duikers and others all eating on the fruit that was being dropped by the baboons. The one baboon jumped onto the bonnet of the landy for a while and just sat there eating fruit!…a lovely experience and a great crowd to share another coffee with. ( a lot more stories to tell about my experiences with baboons too….once again i will get to them and log them into the Bush diary column.

By the time i got back onto the tar it was getting on for 9.30 am so i decided to stop at Tshokwane for breakfast which was maybe another 10 klicks down the road, which i did, and had one of those hearty English breakfasts again whilst shooing off a couple of cheeky monkeys that kept coming and sitting on the chair opposit from me and waiting for a gap to pinch my food (you only have to turn your eyes for a couple of seconds with these blighters and they will have the toast off the plate).

However about two klicks north of Tshokwane, about 40 metres over to my left i came across a lion giraffe kill. There were a couple of other cars there which is basically the only reason i saw it and did not stay long. The other driver told me that the kill was over a day old and apart from getting a quick snap of one of the lions having a snack on it i could only see one other. I figure there must of been more though as it looked liked a reasonable sized giraffe which are are not the easiest animal to bring down even for a lion.

Somehow giraffe kills are always the ‘saddest’ of kills to see, such beautiful graceful animals …even when they are stretched out dead on the ground.

(Jeez…i just heard another elephant rumbling behind me somewhere (the Matjulu river bed runs behind me in a horseshoe bend which is quite dry currently)…i hope it is not the same one again come back to have a real go at me.)

After breakfast at Tshokwane yesterday it was around 11am and i pretty much made a beeline straight for my new camp at Berg n Dal once i got going again.

I arrived at Berg N Dal around 1pm, set up camp (i could not upgrade to a rondavel this time), showered and headed out again around 3pm after a quick walk around the camp.( i almost forgot, there was a fine male lion with a ginger mane and black ‘beard’ sleeping under a bush less than 50 metres from the gate to the camp just twenty metres off the road as i arrived)

I had forgotten how nice the camp is. There is a “rhino walk’ around the perimeter and through the ‘bush’ parts of the camp which is lovely and provides great views over the dam there. Elephant, mountain reedbuck, Maribou and warthogs were present as i walked round.

I headed out again before 4pm to re explore the dirt track that winds around the nearby hills and koppies, i had also forgotton how beautiful the scenery is here, twisting and winding, up and down, through dry water courses and i was really quite surprised at how much game i saw, kudu, rhino, elephant and various other buck. I did not feel like doing anymore driving and came down here to Matjulu to sit out the afternoon. I was rewarded late in the day when a small herd of 15 elephants came down for a drink, including one very young one who was being well shielded by his mother. Lots of growling coming from deep within one or two of the elephants throat.

I was really hoping to get a good sunset shot with the hills but unfortunately the clouds came over and i did not…maybe tomorrow night.
However, as i headed back to camp soon after 5 .30 i arrived there to find a few cars parked by the lion who was walking around and roaring away like a good’un….fantastic way to end the day.

I lit a nice fire outside my tent and could still hear the lion roaring until past seven and still withina fifty metres or so from where i was camped
.
Today i was up very early again and after making a pot of of coffee drove up to the gate before it got light and sat on a rock near the entrance watching the sky turn from blackness through various shades of pre dawn grey until the sun started to rise at about 5.30 when i drove down here to Matjulu.

It is only a 4 kilometre drive but i saw plenty of grazers along the way.

Plenty of early birds around at the water hole, a couple of hyaenas and another elephant came down for an early morning drink before i left just past 7 am and drove up to the top of stein berg which is quite high with a fairly rough track taking you up there.

I had a little walk around on top, admired the views all around me and then went back to camp to chill for a few hours and have some food.

I went back the via the Matjulu river track where i found an aging male lion dozing under a thorn bush shielded from the early rising sun which was quite intense, where i sat for a while.

The river was about 50 metres beyond him from where i was sitting and on the far bank a large herd of maybe 300 buffalo were walking eastwards. They got his attention alright and as i watched him sit up and perk up i could sense that he was looking on them with hungry eyes and anticipation until he realised that he was too old to tackle such a herd on his own and anyway they were too far off to try anything.

On the way back down here this afternoon at 2 pm i saw two groups of 6 White Rhino, each with the mother and the rest being about half her size in both instances, wonderful to see as i am sure everyone knows the white rhino is still on the list of endangered animals.

And now it is 5.00pm and i am going to sit here for another 45 minutes or so and see what comes down before heading off into my last sunset for this trip, a nice fire and some baked mealies and spud.

I was sitting last night after i had finished writing my notes when i heard a kill somewhere close to the fence of the camp.

Not sure what it was but i suspect it may of been hyaenas who often roam around the fences of the various camps. People having braais invariably throw their bones over the fence and i guess that has gone on for many years. Quite a sad thing to hear a kill, but one realises it is not so much a death as it is the perpetuation of life. I wonder how many people realise the horrors that occur in the abbatoirs that supply our supermarkets and butchers?

Later on i was woken by the hyaenas yelling and ‘laughing’ at about 2pm. It must of been within a 100 metres. I have heard it before whilst camping when they have been just 20 or so metres away from me. In the still of night it is quite a bloodcurdling sound that would send a chill down the spine who has not heard it before.

On that occasion i heard the kill as they trapped an impala and slammed it against the fence around the camp in Maroela at about 3.00am one morning. I got up and pretty much watched the whole thing by torch light just a few paces from me, horrifying to watch!!…by the time i got there a few mintues after they had caught the poor beast there were maybe ten hyaenas and virtually nothing left of the impala except his head, horns and lower legs, within five mintutes it was all over. The following night they caught a monkey somehow and that was worse because it sounded human. Little bit scary actually because at the time Maroela only had a fence barely over a metre high with quite a few holes underneath it and being in a tent right next to the fence did not exactly help matters!

Another lovely day today spending the morning along the Sweni river after sitting at the dam for a couple of hours first thing.

I saw plenty of animals including a couple of huge tuskers. In the old days there used to be tuskers with tusks that were over 12 feet long!! There were seven in particular who were around in the 70′s and early 80′s called the ‘magnificent seven’ and i was fortunate to see one of them live, i think he was called Mafamudi or something like that i will have to check. The tusks of the seven are on display in Letaba camp which i will spend time at in January so i will photograph them and post them on the site.

This afternoon i drove back along the N’wanetsi to the Gudzani dam where i spent an hour before crawling home at about 10 kph, lovely drive into the sunset which i thoroughly enjoyed.

The first highlight of the day was at the dam, which is 7 klicks along the road towards Orpen, where i saw another single bull elephant coming down for an early drink. His first trunk full of water he used to squirt at a couple of impala who were already there at the waters edge….they got the message and left rapidly!!

I moved on soon after and headed towards the rockvale water hole which is also a lovely place to park up for a while, it was here that i saw the two big tuskers as well as buffalo and all sorts of game.

I made some breakfast for myself at Muzandzeni which is a kind of a ‘picnic spot’ on the Sweni, one of my favourites in fact. Just a clearing in the bush really where an African couple live and keep it clean and tidy as well as providing anyone who pulls in with a skottle for cooking.

There is a waterhole right there too where i was fortunate enough to have a herd of about 30 buffalo drinking as i ate my breakfast just fifty metres from where i was sitting. No fences or anything like that so it really gives one the feeling of ‘out of Africa’ as in the movies.

I had to laugh, there was another young couple there who appeared to be rare visitors to the bush. They were sitting having some food they had prepared and he was freaking out because a Hornbill kept trying to steal his food while he was eating. Maybe he just has a phobia about birds. I knew a guy like that once who i worked with. He was a genuine tough guy who one would definitely not mess with by choice, yet he was absolutely terrified of birds. I think he had seen the Alfred Hitchcock film when he was very young which had left an indelible mark on him.

The second highlight for me was this afternoon at a large pool of water in the N’wanetsi river bed. It is a pool that i have never seen dry i don’t think and there seem to be two permanent residents, a large hippo and a massive crocodile, apart from several giant meat eating turtles who probably live off the crocs kills. The closest i can get to the water is about 75 metres but is easy viewing with the binoculars and i would say that the croc is at least 4 metres if not five in length.

I was sitting there for a while on my way to Gudzani and an impala was about 12 feet from the edge of the water eating some new green shoots that were sprouting up out of the trampled mud. The crocodile was quite fixated on the impala pointing directly at him but about 12 feet from the waters edge. My view point was about twenty feet above the river bed, so i could see that he was lined up and ready should the impala be stupid enough to take a drink. Instead of just laying there and submerging himself completely he had his eyes on the water line and was swishing his tail slowly back and forth every now and again creating a gentle turbulence in the water which the impala simply must of seen and heard and i wondered what he was doing.

Then it struck me, and i am guessing here, the movement being created by the crocs tail looked and sounded like a barbel (catfish) basking. Although as i say i am guessing, i do believe that the croc was trying to entice the impala down to the waters edge by making it think he was just a barbell and therefore it must be safe to drink.

The impala was an older ram with quite big horns so it had obviously been around a bit and i don’t think he was fooled, but it would not surprise me if it worked on younger less experienced animals.

The third highlight was at the Gudzani dam. It was very busy with a real cacophany going on what the many water birds and hippos, i have some good footage which i will eventually edit and up load here too, a symphony of sound is a better description even if a bit disjointed.

The water was low and i could see the waters edge for a good couple of hundred metres in both directions..right and left of me. Amongst all the goings on around the dam the place was infested with crocs. At one point ten zebras came out of the bushline about 100 metres from me and i was watching them with the binocs as they ambled down for a drink.

I have seen lions ambush zebra before now in similar scenarios and was watching them intently as the breeze indicated that there were a couple of spots where predators could be laid up.

Instead, as i was watching them drinking, a croc of maybe two to three metres leapt out of the water and went for one of the zebras. He missed, but it was an exciting event to see and the zebras kicked a big cloud of dust as they fled!!

Beautiful sunset this evening to end the days viewing and all is well in my world.

Tomorrow i am heading south again, the first leg of my journey home, and tomorrow night i will pull into the southernmost camp in the park, Berg N Dal. I have not been there for years so i am quite looking forward to it. Very different country side as it is quite high in the hills with different flora and fauna altogether and some quite beautiful granite koppies.

It is the evening of day 7 now, sitting on the stoop of my verandah after finishing a plate of Wildebeest potjie. I bought what looked like a big packet of meat with the intention of eating it over today and tomorrow, but there was not so much gnu in there as i thought so i got creative and added half a packet of bacon, good move as it turned out, and i shall pull the same trick again someday.

A potjie by the way is basically a stew cooked in an a cast iron three legged pot, much like a witches cauldron only mine is a smaller version. I guess it is a traditional South African dish and can be done in a variety of ways, the best being to cook it slowly on warm to hot ashes. Depending on what meat you are cooking it can take 5 or 6 hours, especially if it is Oxtail which is probably my favourite, Ostrich neck a close second. Any game meat is delicious though, and i am sure it must be far healthier than cow meat or other animals bred for the pot as the wild game only eats what is natural and available from natures own pantry. It was the way the old voortrekkers used to cook when they were travelling through the country on their oxcarts and for me it always adds a ‘touch of romantiscism’ to my safaris. The other thing of course is to braai (barbeque) on an open fire which is also very special when done under the moon and star light of an evening in the african bush.

There is truly nothing quite like sitting by the fire and watching the stars and listening the night sounds of the bush, even though in this instance i am parked up in one of the bigger camps in the park and have other people around me.

I was due to move on to Balule which is a tiny camp with just six huts on the banks of the, my favourite camp in the kruger and always has been. No electricity with only paraffin lamps, candles and torches for light. The huts were built nearly 100 years ago for the guys who were building a pontoon bridge over the river. It has a fence around it now but still gives one a true feeling of being totally out in the wild, especially as it is so remote. However, as i am on such a short trip and because i had such a fantastic day on day 5 i decided to stay here at Satara for an extra two days and leave out the Balule which i will get to next time i am up here in december – January, when my trip will be for at least a month.

At the moment i am thinking of spending Christmas in Punda Maria and Pafuri which is far into the north on the Limpopo river, obviously close to the Zimbabwe border and also the Mozambique border. Quite different in may ways from the where i am now in the ‘middle’ of the park, or just south of the middle rather, and far more remote with a lot less visitors. I have been up there before now several times and have spent some days without seeing any other vehicles at all outside of the camp and the approach roads.

Well it has been another couple of splendid days although different from the first few. Monday was quite windy and still overcast, even a bit chilly at times in the wind, i can hardly remember seeing the sun all day. I knew i was not going to be able to top day 5’s action so i did not even try. Mind you, Monday morning carried on in much the same vein with several lion sightings, even today i have seen a couple on my early morning drive. Each viewing bringing its own special moments and differances from the previous one, perhaps the lion is doing something differant, or looks completely different, one can never get bored.

I could not bring myself not to do the early morning thing even though my intention was not to ‘chase’ another day like day 5, and both mornings i have been up at the gate way before they opened to watch the dawn breaking and hearing the first birds singing and then out again for sunset game drives.

I spent a few hours yesterday in a bird hide on the Sweni river. Not much water so what was there was packed, a pod of ten hippos, loads of crocodiles on the banks including many very young ones, there must of been around ten that were less than a metre long and it was quite funny watching them stalk the impala and waterbuck who came down to drink and feed on the vegetation on the dry banks, even the impala were many times their body weight.

The floor of the hide is slatted timber and i noticed one impala directly under where i was sitting just a few feet below me.

At the entrance to the hide where i had parked the landy there were a couple of other groups of impala grazing so i figured it was pretty safe and walked into the bush for about fifty metres to try and get a couple of shots of them. I will get kakked on if any of the parks management read this but i just love the feeling of walking near the animals, a bit silly without a rifle i suppose, but like i say there were quite a few buck around as well as kudu so i figured that any lion or leopard was going to go for them before they even looked at me, not to mention the fact that the buck were all very calm. I got to within 30 metres or so from the one group which is very close as any ranger will tell you,but then heard another vehicle approaching so went back, turned out to be a group of American tourists in a combi.

Regarding game viewing it has been much of the same really although this morning i saw a red duiker and from the bird hide i saw a suni which was feeding under the overhanging dried reeds. There quite deep crevices that go under the bank and i suspect it is where the crocs go to sleep when the river dries completely, they certainly get under there in summer when there is water.
I have not made any lists but have seen quite a lot of different birds, i will go through my book when i get home to remind me, and make a list of them all at the end of this blog.

A lot warmer again today and i suspect tomorrow may be another scorcher. Not sure which direction i will take yet but will decide in the morning, maybe i’ll do a morning drive alongside the Sweni which is also a very pretty river and quite often good for game viewing, there is a nice waterhole there with some wide open spaces where i may just park up for a while…we will see….the joy of unfettered wandering in the bush!

I know it is day 5 because i can see that when i wrote about yesterday it was day 4, if it was not for that i would have to sit and try to figure it out. In other words i am totally lost in time, so totally engrossed in what i am doing and where i am that time and days somehow seem to lose all meaning…the sun comes up and it goes down to come around again the following morning.

It is a wonderful head space to be in.

Well if yesterday was a good day today was a fantastic day! Cloudy and cool all day which is the very best game viewing weather one can get, the action was non stop all day, one thing after another. A Cat day would be a good title and one moment was just about the funniest, stupidest and most adrenalin pumping i have had in the bush!!

After being lulled asleep last night by a Scops owl i woke at 3.45 am feeling thoroughly refreshed and more than ready for the day ahead. I knew in my bones it was going to be good, i could see there had been a light spattering of rain during the night, the wind was blowing a bit and it was much cooler than the last few days. As it grew light i was sure the clouds were not going to burn off and it proved to be so.

As usual i was at the gate far too early at about 5.00am to be greeted by elephants trumpeting somewhere close by as i drank my first coffee of the morning…everything just tastes so much nicer up here.

I had thought about going straight back to the lion kill as i was pretty sure that the lions would still be there, and if not there would probably be a bit of a spectacle with vultures, jackals and hyaenas, but instead i chose to drive along the south side of the N’wanetsi and come back via the north side. Two reasons really, the south side is a smoother drive as it leads up to Singita lodge (where Nelson Mandela for example stays when he visits here) and i wanted to see a water hole called Sonop that i always enjoy. Actually three reasons, i was not the only one who knew about the kill and i figured there would be too many others heading straight there and i was not ready for dust or other vehicles.

So i had a nice gentle cruise to start my day. Along the way i saw quite a few hyaenas anyway but not too much else as there has been a bush fire recently for most of the way on the river side left of me and it probably needs another week or two of growth. After about twenty Klicks there is a dirt track which heads north and crosses the river and that is where the viewing really started.

I did stop at Sonop but apart from a black backed jackal and a Bateleur Eagle there was not much going on.

After about two klicks down the dirt track which twists and turns through gentle hills and down and up through the river i came round a bend to find a huge African Wild cat crapping in the centre of the track. Not often seen as they are as shy as any cat can be, i was highly delighted and it really was a big one, as big as an Alsation.

Oh i forgot, i also saw a group of Ostriches and got a nice shot of a Nyala Bull which is one of the most attractive Antelopes around.

A couple of klicks later i came across sixteen lions about thirty metres to my right. They were all lying or sitting just in front of a fairly dense line of thicket bush and after watching them for a while they got up one by one and walked into the bush a little and then parallel with the track i was on.

Although i had found them resting they seemed quite alert and i reckoned they were hunting still so i stayed with them as i could see one or two of them every now and then. I lost them after about half an hour and drove on but within a kilometre i came across about twenty giraffe which i thought would be exactly the sort of sized animal they would be looking for, so i parked up for nearly an hour in the hope that i might see some real action.

Not to be and i did not see them again but it was great to watch the giraffes as two of them were having a real jousting match with each other. Like boxers in a way except that there fists are the two tufts on the top of their heads which i believe is really hard gristle bone…not that i have ever touched one. They bend their necks down and then swing them up quite violently pounding their targets a kind of an upward headbutt.

I gave up the ghost with the lions and moved off again but well pleased to have seen them, they were all beautiful specimens too, all seemingly about three or four years young but fully grown.

Another few klicks along the track i glimpsed a leopard, but it was a brief moment as he had crossed the road about 75 metres ahead of me and had disappeared by the time i got to the point where he had crossed….more of a silhouette sighting but always wonderfull to see.

Once over the N’wanetsi i turned left onto the dirt track which runs east to west on the north side of the river, probably my favourite bit of track in the park, certainly one of the best for game viewing. Apart from the fact that i just about never fail to see plenty along that particular track it is very beautiful in summer, but even in winter it has a certain beauty about it as it winds its way alongside the river for about twenty klicks.

Three klicks down i came to a lioness who was clearly hunting and hungry, so i parked up and watched her crouching in a small thicket just a few metres off the track looking out for some food to walk up from the river which was upwind of her. Once again i thought i was going to get lucky with some action right in front of me when she spotted a young male Kudu come out of the bush line along the river bank but at that moment some baboons in the trees above starting barking a warning and gave the Kudu the heads up. She seemed quite pissed off and walked off to another thicket at the base of a deadwood tree about fifty metres further into the bush overlooking a slope that ran away from me so i moved on again.

About another hundred metres further on i came across a huge male lion that was sleeping under a tree right on the edge of the track i was on, they must of been mates to have been so close but he did not seem to have an interest in the world, maybe she was doing the hunting for both of them, it is the norm in the lion world.

After a while i moved on again and a further five or six klicks on i saw a huge male Leopard in the river bed. Another landy was parked up alreadyt and they told me that it had just come down out of a tree where they had first seen it when another couple of youngish Kudu and half a dozen Impala had come down for a drink at one of the pools of water in the river bed. Again,I only saw the leopard momentarily but could see the Kudu and Impala which were all snorting alarm calls to each other . I would of stayed but it was getting on for 11am by now and i was feeling pretty hungry myself so i carried on.

Another six or seven klicks further on i came across another five lions, one male and four females that also seemed very alert. They were close to the river bank which was about thirty metres away at that point and i could see the far side of the river bed where there was a small herd of elephant passing, it was lovely sight to see the elephants in the background with the lions watching them intently for any weakness. There were a couple of smaller, maybe ‘teenage’ ellies but i reckon the lions did not want to try and tackle them with the bigger aunties that were also there.

I was very hungry by now so i only stayed briefly but then another five or six klicks further on i came across another male lion!! Also sleeping, at the time i found him all i could really see was his four legs sticking up in the air with an occasional flick of his tail.

One morning, and five different lion sightings!!…almost unbelievable.

I guess i must of got back to satara at around noon where i immediately got stuck into another one of those big breakfast which i polished off very quickly…the lions would of been proud of me!

A quick shower and i was on my way out again just before 1pm…i did not want to waste any time in camp with so much going on.

I headed straight back along the dirt track alongside the north of the river, apart from having a wonderful morning altogether i wanted to try and find that leopard again, i heard during breakfast that one of the guides had also seen it.

About ten klicks along the track i saw another landy parked up and pulled up to say hi and see what he was looking at (i must admit it is sometimes good to have other folk around as one cannot possibly see everything)…sure enough there was the big leopard on a low bough overhanging the river bed. I got a shot but not a great one as there was a bit of green foliage and it was a good forty metres away.

The other guy and his wife drove off soon after as the leopard was facing away from us and he was going back to the five lions that were laid up further back down the track. Murphys law, not two minutes after he left the leopard sat up and turned around before lying down again facing me, still not a great shot but i took a couple anyway.

Five minutes later he came down and started walking eastwards along the edge of the river bank. I followed him for a while but then lost him on a horseshoe bend in the river. Beautiful animal and great viewing through the binoculars.

I carried on eastwards and pulled into a track that took me right to the edge of the river bank where, to my amazement i found another leopard, also on a bough over hanging the river and less than ten metres from where i was able to park. Fantastic..if i did not have the pictures to prove it i doubt anyone would believe me! I am quite sure it was a different leopard as it was a lot smaller.

This cat also seemed quite alert and on the lookout, 99% of the time any leopard would be resting up at this time of day and waiting for dusk but i guess that because it was so cool and cloudy it was not so tired and anyway it was resting whilst watching.

About 20-30 minutes later the guy in the other landy pulled into the cutout. He had gone back to the lions to find that they had crashed and were obviously not intent on doing anything for a while. He came back and saw that the first leopard was gone and drove on until he saw me whereupon i pointed out the second leopard.

Anyway, he parks up next to me and we chatted a bit. I don’t know his name but i shall call him Herman as he reminded me of a ‘Herman’ i used to know about twenty years ago. The guy was wearing a skydiving t-shirt and although i did not ask him about it he did seemed like the adrenaline junkie type but a nice enough guy who seemed to be a good laugh. After a while Herman offered me a beer but i had already cracked one, so he gets out of his car and goes to the rear to get one for himself from the cooler box…i figured he was just showing off but it was a pretty stupid thing to do with a leopard just a few metres away! The leopard looked at him and it seemed clear to me that she was less than impressed but all the same did not really move. The leopard went back to looking out over the river bed.

Ten minutes later Herman says to me that he he had grown up on a farm where they had leopards around and he figured it was not interested in anything but resting up for the remainder of the day and says that he was going to walk to the front side of it to get a good picture!! I could hardly believe my ears but there it is. I told him that i figured the leopard was actually quite alert and hungry, but he was having none of it so i said i would watch his back for him even though i thought he was nutz….i am sure he must of had one toot too many. His wife did not seem to be saying anything so i figured it was pointless arguing with him.

I thought to myself that i should get my cam corder out as it might well be a real ‘youtube’ moment, but it seemed like a nasty thought that was tempting grief for Hermanso i didn’t do it and readied my camera instead. I still did not really believe he would do it.

But he did!!!….

He gets out of the car and takes about six paces until he was virtually under the the leopard and starts snapping away. I could hardly believe my eyes, the leopard turned immediately, i got a shot at that point and had a look afterwards, the look on the leopards face is one of absolute contempt, i shall post it here later.

After maybe twenty seconds ( i don’t think the leopard could really believe her eyes either!!) the leopard suddenly jumps up with the most vicious snarl you can imagine (personally i think a leopards roar is scarier than a lions in some ways and in fact from what i hear from hunters i would rather face a lion than a leopard) she turns around in a bound and starts coming down the tree like lightening. Well i tell you it really was a real adrenaline pumping moment, i got one quick shot of the leopard as i shouted at Herman whilst starting my engine simultaneously, firstly to wind my windows up as i have seen footage of a leopard attack a ranger through a truck window but also with the thought that i was going to have to try and ram the cat to save the man…all this happened in a split second. The guy absolutely kakked himself and nearly fell over as he scrambled back into his car with his wife screaming.

It would of been a real favourite indeed on the you tube site.

I know it sounds ridiculous but it happened just like that, it is the most stupid thing i have ever seen anyone do in the bush, possibly anywhere for that matter. I looked at Herman in amazement and asked him how his adrenaline was and with that we all just packed up laughing. I always thought that i was a bit of a crazy coot but Herman’s actions surely takes the cake.

I was laughing about it for the rest of the afternoon and still am, although i realise it is actually very serious and not really funny, but it got my adrenaline going, all was well that ended well and the only thing to do was see the funny side of it.

I know why the hunters of old and of today and all the indigenous people of the bush call the leopard the yellow flash. That guy was very very lucky that the leopard did not just drop onto him or had an easy access to get to the base of the tree she was in, Herman would of been dead in an instant. His life though, what can i say!

By the time we had recovered we saw the leopard had gone behind us into a thicket where in actual fact i was able to get some nice shots of her which i will also post later. Unbelievable experience, and in fact it is only now later in the evening that the reality of what i saw is sinking in.

After a short while the leopard moved off down into the river bed and out of view so we had a final chuckle about it and went our separate ways.

It was getting on for 4pm by now and i decided to have a 10-15kph drive back to camp for the evening thinking that that was surely it for the day.

The cloud had actually cleared a little and it looked it was going to be a spectacular sunset that i would be driving westwards into.

About five klicks on the way back i came around a corner just in time to see a herd of +-75 Buffalo coming up from the river which was lovely to see and i pulled up to take some shots. After about 5 minutes i was virtually surrounded by them as they crossed the track around me on their way. There was one with her mother that was surely no older than a month, beautiful little chocolate brown thing.

A couple from the Czech republic had pulled up coming eastwards towards me and took my e mail address as they said they had got a picture of me with the buffalo around me, can’t wait to see what it looks like.

I carried on crawling home, grinning from ear to ear, a special day in the bush.

I had my eye on the setting sun and was looking for a good backdrop to get a couple of shots. As i came round another bend i saw a lovely tree ahead with the sun directly behind it so i stopped I leant over to pick my camera up and as i did a female lion just walked out of the bush in front of me not even ten metres from where i had parked…i could not believe it, i had not even seen it yet had stopped in the perfact place. I tried to get a shot of her with the sun behind her but she was across the track already where i saw there were another two lionesses laid out in the grass just a few metres from me, i looked back into the riverine bush and saw a nice male coming up the bank and just about managed to get a shot of him with the setting sun in the background….hopefully it will come out well.

I looked back through the bush and saw that there were more still down in the river and luckily just ten metres ahead was another little cutout that goes down the bank almost to the river bed where there were some nice big flat rocks (in fact it is a spot i know well and often pull in there for coffee when i am up this way). I quickly pulled in there in time to see another lioness with two cubs which were probably less than a year old. I managed to get a couple of shots with the mother and one of the cubs but they disappeared up the other bank quite quickly, they seemed very shy. I did notice though that the one cub had some sort of bucks hoof and shin in its mouth just like a kid with a lollipop!!

That must be it for the day, it was well past 5.00pm by now.

But NO!!

Not even another kilometre down the track i come across a herd of about 20 elephants also coming up out of the river! Absolutely stunning and amongst them were two little ones that could not of been older than a few of months at the most…i wondered if they were twins as they seemed identical.

They were play fighting with each other, kicking up dust and the one starts mock charging me…it was the cutest thing. The mother was there…or an auntie…also just three or four metres from me eating leaves from a bush that was between her and me and i swear that she seemed to have a look on her face that said ‘sorry…they are just kids having fun’….i smiled back at her and put it down as one of those absolutely wonderful moments in life that i will remember forever. She really was calm…i cannot help but believe that there is far more to the intelligence of these animals than we realise, i am quite positive that they instinctively know the good guys from the bad guys amongst humans.

A wonderful , truly special day that i will not forget in a long time.

There is no way i can top this tomorrow so i am definitely just going birding, perhaps even spend some time in camp and cook up a potjie.

Another excellent day!

First i must note the treat i had last night. After finishing writing i went for a quick walk around the camp just to finish me off for the day. What a bonus, i walked up by the gate where i found a few people gathered. Obviously i went over to find out what the attraction was and right next to the gate (on the other side i should add) was about 8 elephants feeding off quite a big tree about 2 metres away, fantastic to watch and hear so close up, i could of literally reached through the wooden gate and touched them, i was tempted but didn’t as i could not really see beyond a few metres properly and there were a couple of young ones with them.

Apparently they had been there for half an hour already so i only got to see them for ten minutes or so and they left.

They must of come back after everyone had gone though as in the morning i could hardly believe what was left of the tree, at least half of it was gone. I should of checked to see what type of tree it was, i will look in my book, but it was full of bright green new leaves sprouting out .The landscape is fairly dry at the moment as we have not had any spring rain yet, so the trees that do have new shoots stand out like a sore thumb. I guess it must be a regular ritual for the jumbos, because even though there was virtually nothing left of it they had not smashed it down completely and there were enough branches left for it to grow again this year. As destructive as elephants can seemingly be to our eyes they do know what they are doing, they know that tomorrow comes and they also play a crucial part in the general eco system…in other words there is real method to the apparent madness of their destruction which plays a vital part in the well being of not only other animals but the actual fauna and flora as well.

So, after another really good sleep i was up at 4.30 this morning and up at the gate 15 minutes early which was nice as i had a chance to chat with the gatekeeper, a young Shangaan guy from Hazyview, always nice to communicate with these guys and get an idea of who they are and what they are about.

I had decided last night to head straight for the old transport dam which is on my way north. The dam is one that the original transporters in their ox carts used to use way back when.

I saw quite a few interesting things on the way including three different sightings of Rhino and arrived at the dam around 7 am.

Great choice and i stayed until past 11.00am there was so much going on.

The dam is great for viewing with almost 360 Degree views for far so that one can see everything that comes and goes, and at this time of year with the bush being so sparse it is even better.

During the time i was there i probably saw close on a thousand animals coming and going in single file from all angles.

At least five hundred Impala with at least twenty different groups that intermittently never stopped coming and going during the whole time i was there.

Additionally there were Kudu, Wildebeest, Giraffe, monkeys, Baboons, Zebras, Buffalo, Warthog and one herd of 12 Elephant. Always a great sight to see elephants trekking through the bush towards one. Then, when they cleared the bush line, from nearly every group there would be a few who would run down to the waters edge almost skipping and hopping with delight at being able to drink and slake their thirst.

Very few of the animals hang around at the waters edge for fear of predators so at times it was like Piccadilly Circus with some coming and some going from all corners of the compass at all times (except from behind me which was a track that led up to the road) constan movement.

There were no crocs around it seemed, i certainly never saw one, and many of the animals, especially the bigger ones, had a brief splash around after drinking.

There was also plenty of birdlife too, Kori Bustards, Hornbills, Whydahs, Quineas, Guinea Fowl, glossy starlings, various plovers and many more, but no waders.

I suppose the highlight was a couple of Fish Eagles who were out looking for breakfast, and after a couple of hours of moving from tree to tree to various rocks around the dam the one eventually swooped down just 30 metres or so in front of me and took a fair sized Barbel that was wallowing in the mud in the shallow water at the edge of the dam nearest to me. The fish stood no chance as the eagle came in behind it (almost flying directly towards me) and just landed on the poor thing, gripped it and hopped less than a metre out of the water and onto the churned up mud at the waters edge. A few seconds getting a good grip on the fish, and it was off to a tree about 100 metres away to breakfast. I am sure i got a few shots of it taking off with the fish in its claws…too busy to check any pictures at all yet.

I will have to soon though, only 3 three and a half days so far and i have taken about four hundred shots already, some trips it can take me three weeks to get so many. Mind you, i will probably edit out between fifty and a hundred.

By 11.00 am things were starting to slow down a little as it started to get quite hot so with a fair drive ahead of me and a rumbling stomach i headed off north on the tar road that runs up the centre of the park ( about 440 kilometres from north to south).

I stopped at Tshokwane for another huge great farmhouse breakfast al fresco which was delicious, topped up with coffee and headed off again.

After stopping briefly at a couple of watering holes along the way for a few shots of bushbuck, saddle billed storks, elephants and a few other sightings i arrived at Satara soon after 2pm.

Great to be back again, it was never my favourite camp in the past but i am quite fond of it these days, especially as, in my opinion, it is in one of the best viewing areas in the park overall. I suppose it is probably slightly south of the centre of the park.

I checked in and had a quick shower before heading out to see how much water there is along the Nwanetsi and was very happy to see that there is some which bodes well for viewing over the next week.

Taking the dirt track running alongside the north of the N’wanetsi as it heads east i had parked up at at a water hole with wide views all around and cracked a beer intending to stay there for a couple of hours before heading back and trying to get some nice sunset shots, but for some reason i was not settled and decided to drive on a bit further.

Another great choice as 7 kilometres further on i came across two male Lions just a few metre off the track with a large bull waterbuck kill. I know it was large because the horns were massive, not much short of a metre long each. Big animals, they are probably the same height as a cow and not tghat much smaller in body mass.

The two lion were completely stuffed, not surprising as over half of the waterbuck was eaten already!!…they must of killed it around mid morning i would say. Both of them were lying next to the remains and occasionally sitting up to scare off the vultures that were gathering. In the surrounding trees i guess there were about twenty. So i sat there for the remainder of the afternoon and took quite a few shots whilst chilling out on a couple of ice cold beers…paradise!

So another great day, i am in camp now and just about ready to shower again and throw a few z’s at the thatch. Can’t wait to get back out there again tomorrow.