Olifants

So the Donkey Damage is fully repaired; the bakkie is immaculate. Perfect. Better than the latest all-electric Papal Ferrari. Now insurance wants a full 100-point check. Oh boy and liewe bliksem. The technicians find a dozen things wrong due to Old Age, not donkey-related. Unfair to put an 18yr-old Ford through such stress!

They found things equivalent to our hip n knee replacements n stuff. Bushes, rubber dust seals, etc. Reminded me of the Miss Universal Joints pageant. So we soldier on, still repairing the Truck with a Tent 77days after The Curious Incident With The Donkey in Broad Daylight.

Time to escape again. This time Olifants camp in central Kruger park. Ten km in from Phalaborwa gate this elegant lady calmly walked past us. She was relaxed but alert to anything in the long grass that she might catch, shred and eat.

Jess chose to lie in this am. I stopped to listen to a River Frog (engine switched off, are you listening, Kruger visitors?) and enjoy my coffee hot, when I heard lions roaring some distance away off the Balule road. A scrub robin and a bush-shrike were entertaining me when this fella walked out of the bush and lay down right in front of me.

Now Jess would have wanted to be with me. Up until now, parked with the engine off, she’d have been saying, ‘Dad, there’s a reason it’s called a game DRIVE!’

And then I saw a kill! Parked on a low-level bridge, a bright little malachite kingfisher swooped upriver, low over the water. It perched, then plunged, caught a tiny little silver fish, bashed its kop on a branchlet, then swallowed it whole. It was brutal.

A last morning drive yielded lovely bird sightings n sounds, but not one single mammal! Not a squirrel, not an impala! I’m glad Jess chose to lie in. She needs mammals on her game drives.

Then back to camp, last breakfast on the deck with Jess, and the drive home. Lots of eles, a steenbok, hyena mom with three little pups, giraffe, buffalo, and a female Red-crested Korhaan.

~~oo0oo~~

bakkie – pickup, ute

liewe bliksem – gosh