Sadly, today is our final one at the bush camp, and we cannot believe five days went by all so quickly. Always a sign that we were have not only a wonderful time, but an experience to remember forever. We are not going to miss getting up at 4am, however. Reminds us of the days when we worked, either commuting very early to beat the traffic, and actually starting work at 6am. Nope, have not missed that either.
The trees and ground were still damp from yesterday's rain, leaving behind many muddy puddles in the dirt roads. One good thing was that it made it easy for our tracker to find lion tracks in the sand not far from the camp. If we are lucky, we may see more of these before we leave. Every morning, Jeffrey asks everyone in the vehicle what we would like to see today. We all say leopard, lion, rhino, or perhaps a kill. No matter what we say, Jeffrey will answer with, "What do you think this is, a zoo????" Then he laughs. This morning Dale, the manager, overheard him say that to all of us, and we do not think he was amused. With the different nationalities visiting the camp, you can never assume everyone gets that type of humor. We did, but others did not.
The first animals spotted this morning were the impalas and the grey duikers.
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| Impala bucks |
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Looking for girl impala
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Being so close to the camp, they did not know the leopard was tracking them all night, judging from the tracks we found. With the damp brush, many of the bird species were out and about. We saw the African hawk, a brown snake eagle, a brown-headed parrot, and a jacobin cuckoo.
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| Hawk |
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Hawk
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Brown-headed parrot
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On our way to see some wildebeest, we passed a huge spider that was munching on a grasshopper about as big as the spider was.
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Huge spider with his breakfast of a grasshopper
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A small, but colorful kingfisher was spotted sitting on a branch. He was as pretty as the lilac roller.
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Brown hooded kingfisher
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| A herd of wildebeest |
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| A pair of wildebeest |
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| Another pair of wildebeest |
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| Blue wildebeest |
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| A young buck |
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| A good size herd |
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| An older wildebeest |
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Notice the striped hide
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Zebra grazing
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The zebras and wildebeest were great to see, but the real treat was when we found a pride of lionesses sleeping in an open sandy area right off of the road. There were eight lazy cats, stretched out, sleeping the morning away. When we approached the pride, some of them looked intently at us from a prone position. They simply stare, size you up, decide you are not a threat or good to eat, then close their eyes, and plop down to sleep again.
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| Watching us |
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| Really frightened of us? Not. |
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| Undignified |
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| More lions |
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| Sleeping off their hunt |
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| Life of leisure |
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| The guard of the lionesses |
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| Looking at us again |
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| Leaving |
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| Like the sand... it was cool |
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| "Lion" around |
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| This one looks older and leaner |
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| Resting |
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Got a thorn in her paw
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Considering that our bush camp has over 2000 acres and we can cross over to neighboring Sabi Sabi with 12,500 acres, finding these big animals is not always easy, but with the help of several rangers who keep in touch with each other, it is do-able. Considering that the entire Sabi Sand Game Reserve has 160,000 acres with over a dozen game reserves in it, finding these animals is really incredible. Now if you consider that the size of Kruger National Park is 5,000,000 acres, the chances of seeing game animals up close and personal there is rare, unless you know where you are going.
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| A lone hyena |
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| Looking for prey |
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| Trees of the bush |
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| Grazers |
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Good grasslands
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Thorny acacia
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There were a few more sightings of a tree squirrel, a red-backed shrike, and a grey goaway lorie, followed by a female elephant with two babies.
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| Tree squirrel |
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| Red-backed shrike |
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| Goaway bird |
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| Lilac breasted roller |
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| Lilac roller |
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| Lilac roller |
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| Suckling baby |
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| Elephants |
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Not liking us there
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That was where we got into trouble. Attempting to drive around these elephants to make room for another Land Rover, we ended up stuck in a boghole, that was created by a spring uphill from us. Our driver did not see it before he turned in the grass. The back tires went down, and the more he gunned the engine, the more we dug in. All we could smell was burning tires.
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Oh, no....we are stuck in the mud
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So the other driver from Sabi Sabi drove his vehicle right next to us, and the four younger people transferred over to their truck temporarily. The four of us older folks had to stay in the Land Rover, because we could not get out on the ground due to the elephant being so close. The two rangers and two trackers got their big hand-cranked jacks to lift up the backend of the vehicle. Digging out the sandy muck with shovels allowed them to jamb dead tree wood under the tires to get some traction. They tried over and over to get us out, but it did not work....all we saw was dead wood go flying in the air.
Now any other day, we would not care about getting back late, but since we were scheduled to leave the camp by 9:45am, we were starting to get concerned. Worse come to worse, Jeffrey would have called Dale, who could have picked us up in his truck. Obviously, these things happen all the time, and the fellows knew what to do. What we finally thought was that every vehicle should be outfitted with winches to pull each other out of such predicaments. Eventually, the wood trick worked, and we were on our way, taking back the four kids into the back seats. All in all, it only took 30 minutes to get us going again. Sure glad this did not happen near the lions.
As we pulled away, we looked back to see that a spring was running down the slope where we had gone off-road. Well, count that up as another unique experience for us, and some entertainment for the three elephants that stayed in the trees watching the show. Again, we missed the bush coffee stop, but no one was complaining.
We were back to the lodge by 9am, and served a quick breakfast. Deciding not to order hot food, we were happy to dine on what they brought us. That was yogurts, cereal, fruit, juice, toast, and plenty of coffee.
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| Breakfast back at the camp |
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| Too much food, not enough time |
Back at the room, we finished packing and were ready for our ride, which had arrived while we were gathering our bags. Honestly, we were sad to leave.
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Ready to go? Not really.....
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As you can guess, this type of side trip was right up our alley.....trees, meadows, wild bush, animals, birds....how good is that? Being outdoors, swimming, walks in the heat of the day, two game drives, watching wild animals from your private balcony? Perfect. Meeting the friendly staff, the excellent generous meals, all the beer and sodas, and amarula? Priceless. Our only wish is that we can come back here again someday soon. It was good for the soul, if you know what we mean.
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Last view of the meadow and pond
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Our buddies Margaret and Keith had left ahead of us, driven by our driver/guide from last year. His name is Tinyiko, and he happened to come back from his week vacation today, in time to drive them to the airport. Since they had left first, we did not see him. However, on our way to the Mpumalanga Airport, our Thompsons driver passed him, and got us to the airport 15 minutes ahead of them. Since the drivers never know what will happen on this road, they take advantage of the chance to speed to make sure we are on time. Early is better than late when you need to fly somewhere. And they seem to know the spots where the cops are, and slow down temporarily.
What we did miss was the chance to stop to look at the wood carvings and fabrics displayed on the roadside on the hour and a half drive to Nelspruit. There is no doubt in our minds that we would have picked up something exotic to go with the collection at home. The only thing we slowed for were the few vervet monkeys that crossed the road occasionally.
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Mpumalanga Airport and our plane
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At the Mpumalanga terminal, we finally spotted Tinyiko saying goodbye to Keith and Margaret. He recognized us, shaking our hands, and we remembered him instantly. Really nice fellow, soft-spoken, and an excellent ranger we recalled. We had time to flip through the pages of the cookbook we bought at the camp, and found that Tinyiko's photo was in it with some of the other staff members. We wonder if he is part of the family that co-owns the lodge? We certainly hope to see him again also.
Well, the flight was on time and checking in was a piece of cake. We noticed that around 22 of the HAL guests were also flying back with us. Most of them had taken the HAL tour to Lukimbi, another game lodge in the area. We secretly smiled, because we knew they had paid double of what we did, and may not have had such a great experience, judging from the stories they were sharing with each other. This flight held 87 people, very close to each other, but enough legroom to keep it comfortable. We boarded it from the tarmac once again, and were airborne by 1:15pm.
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Ready to board the South African Airline, AVRO 85, seats 83 passengers
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Lunch was served even though the flight was under three hours in duration. There was a choice of two entrees....chicken and beef. We each took a different one, although the chicken won out over the curried beef. The crackers and cheese were good, as were the chocolate candies and diet soda. Very sleepy, we snoozed off and on until we landed at Cape Town International Airport.
With these smaller planes, you always debark on the tarmac, then transfer to the standing buses to the terminal. The baggage pickup carousel was quite close, so we waited for our bags to come. But with so many other HAL passengers with us, most all the duffel bags were the same. Remembering to use something colorful on the bags, like a luggage tie, or a yarn ball, it helped to locate ours quicker. However, only one of ours arrived. Then the carousel stopped. Oh no, there is no way it got lost on the way. Eventually, it started up again, and our duffel was the very last one to arrive. Hey, better late than never, we say.
Outside the doors, our driver from Thompsons was waiting with a sign with our names on it. Gosh that is a good feeling. He greeted us and insisted on taking my bag on the way to his car outside. Walking past the HAL group waiting for their bus, we loaded into the car and were happily on our way to the pier. That is the beauty of traveling independently....no waiting for anyone but ourselves.
Despite some commute traffic, which was going in the opposite direction, we arrived to the Amsterdam by 5pm.
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The Amsterdam docked in Cape Town
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It did feel good to be back "home" as all of the staff greeted us with a welcome back as we checked in. In our room, we had five days worth of daily newsletters, newspapers, pillow cards and candies arranged neatly on the bed. Also, we had two very large and heavy books, titled "Tutu", with photos and text about the life and times of Archbishop Tutu. Two mimeographed cards signed by him were next to the books. This was our formal night gift from the Mariner Appreciation Days.
It was obvious that the party was over with the CEO's of HAL's royal visit. They had all left the ship, and we do know that Gerald B., the President of the Mariner Society, will be going on a private safari with some of his buddies. He was so excited about the adventure when we shared dinner way back in January while in Ft. Lauderdale. Our biggest disappointment was that we missed seeing him. We did leave a thank you note for the nice bottle of wine he sent to us after we embarked the ship in Florida. He is one of the nicest guys.
Spending the rest of the afternoon unpacking, we were already missing the bush camp. We could have easily missed dinner at 8pm, but since six of us had been gone for 5 days, we had missed being with Barb and Maureen. And we did want to find out how Bill & Marianne had liked their trip to Zambia and Botswana. They had a different type of excursion, but equally as exciting as our trip. They saw Victoria Falls, Chobe, rode elephants, and took a dinner train ride, as well as a sundowner boat ride on the Zambezi River. They loved every minute.
We were so tired, crawling into the bed was great. But not until one of us worked on the computer for an hour in an attempt to catch up with the reports. Since our stay in Cape Town will be cut short, leaving around 2pm, we will need to get up early if we want to go to the waterfront. Drats!
