– life – bokdrols of wisdom –
My bird list book made by Aitch back in 1985, soon after we met.
Every bird from Roberts handwritten – and done on the quiet so I only got to see the end result for my first xmas present from her!
After that we birded in other countries in Africa. Also in the USA, Brasil, UK, Europe, Malaysia and Indonesia. These lists I just hand-wrote in.
Here she is round about then . .
~~~oo0oo~~~
Later we go on a night game drive in an open vehicle with Patrick, ‘our’ Mkhuze Ezemvelo Ranger. The three of us and a family of four from Durban. On the drive I realise that of the eight people on the vehicle I am the only one reflecting an excessive amount of moonlight from my peachy face. Probably scaring the animals.
I’ll have to get meself a balaclava.
On the drive, Patrick spots a nightjar in his spotlight, sitting lengthwise on a low branch. Probly a European Nightjar judging only by that behaviour.
. . . to actually stop and think WTF and HOW TF and holy guacomole!
An oke from Pretoria who had the misfortune to be sent to Pretoria Boys Hah – and thereby dip out on a decent, co-ed, normal, non-pervy upbringing* – has just sent his car (which he happened to be involved in the design and making of himself) into deep space.
He took his own car, put David Bowie on the audio player, wrote DON’T PANIC ala Douglas Adams from Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy on the dashboard screen and fired his fuckin own aut OUT INTO SPACE!
Up into orbit around the Earth, then out towards Mars, but past Mars so that a red convertible will now be orbiting the Sun for the next billion years! Obviously Pretoria Boys High was focused elsewhere in the 80’s while the rest of SA was keen on a big anti-littering campaign.
And there it goes, actually jolling in space, the first open-top car to ever cruise with the whole of Earth showing up outside the window, then fade away in the rearview mirror as Mars grows bigger. As far as picking up chicks goes, its odds are no worse than Pretoria in the 80’s.
If you had told me this in the Doories pub I’d have told you:
Shut The Fuck Up, and
Sit The Fuck Down
(I got that from my new millenium kids)
Holy shit!
————
This is so amazing I can personally only think of ONE WAY in which it could have been made even more awesome:
If they’d fired a grey and grey 1965 Opel Concorde Rekord-breaker up with a wax figure of a slightly balding oke behind the wheel drinking Black Label beer and singing Lou Reeds’ Walk on the Wild Side on the playa and ALICE’S RECTUM written in lipstick on the windscreen – now THAT . .
. . THAT woulda trumped this little sports car.
Not a convertible, a convert-ed – it would have a roof, but same would be dented cos of some maniac jumping on it with a space suit on.
On board the red sportscar is something very special.
The Arch – pronounce ‘ark’ for archive – library, created using a new technology, 5D optical storage in quartz, developed by Dr. Peter Kazansky and his team, at the University of Southampton, Optoelectronics Research Centre. The disks are written by a femtosecond laser on quartz silica glass. Data is encoded digitally using plasma disruptions from the laser pulses. Arch 1 is smaller but this new medium is expected to soon achieve a storage capacity of 360 Terabytes – 7000 Blu-Ray Disks! – per 3.75 inch disk of quartz, and is stable for at least 14 billion years under a wide range of extreme conditions. Today this is the best way to store data for billions of years in space.
The Roadster will orbit the Sun for at least millions of years and will likely be the oddest object in the solar system, and thus the perfect place to put an Arch library so that it can be noticed and retrieved in the distant future.
~~oo0oo~~
*maybe not. An interview in Rolling Stone tells of an abusive father, two marriages (update three), two divorces (update three), six kids (update eleven); Where does he find the TIME for all this!?
** We had an ancient goat of a Pommy optics lecturer named Frank Duro who would say “Alice’s Rectum” when anyone fussed. He meant “Alles sal Regkom” – all will be well.
Aitch did.
She introduced me to Douglas Adams’ five Hitchhikers Guide books. For years I just looked at them on our library shelf, stuck in my natural history and science rut. Of course we’ve all read about them and seen many quotes from them, like these:
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
“There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”
“Don’t Panic.”
“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”
“You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
“Why, what did she tell you?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”
“Space, is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
After Aitch died I finally read them. All. Voraciously. How could I not get hooked with those lines and others like this:
“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t”
I also read Adams’ real-life travel book on vanishing species where he says something about how the rhinos “trotted like boulders”.
I can clearly hear Aitch saying, “See?! I TOLD you! Hmph!” – triumphant grin, nose in the air.
=========ooo000ooo=========
.
Adams’ artistic sensibility is both specific and elusive. He can go from distraught to delighted in the space of a modifier. He combines Gary Larson’s irony, Bill Watterson’s wistful idealism, Oscar Wilde’s keen social observation, and Dorothy Parker’s mischievousness. But set in space. In short, he is a genre all to himself.
=========ooo000ooo=========
It bugs me that our “Restaurant” and “Mostly Harmless:” books are missing from Adams’ “trilogy in four parts”, so here’s an internet pic of all five, just because.
Getting into Botswana’s Okavango Delta can be awfully expensive.
A cheaper way is to fly in to Oddballs Palm Island Luxury Lodge, get on a mokoro and disappear off into the wild with a guide who – unlike you – knows where he’s going and what he’s doing. In 1993 Aitch and I did just that, spending a night at Oddballs, where you are given a little dome tent to pitch on the hard-baked earth under the palm trees.
You get visitors:
The name is ironic, see (“contrary to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this” – I made a quick check; don’t want to get ‘ironic’ wrong). While in camp you stock up on the meagre supplies available in their shop, like potatoes and onions; a tent, a braai grid; add it to the 10kg you’re allowed to bring in on the high-wing Cessna 206’s and you’re away! 10kg doesn’t go far when you’re a books, binocs and spotting scope junkie!
The next morning we pushed off in our gentles S-shaped tree trunk mokoro to enjoy six nights out on the water in the care of a wonderful man named Thaba Kamanakao. He rigged up the seats so they were really comfy, the backrests enabling you to fall asleep at times!
Thaba said we could choose where we wanted to camp – anywhere. Soon after lunch we saw a magnificent Jackalberry tree on an island and said ‘there!’ – my guess is he knew that! We set up camp – our tent and two deckchairs and a ready-made campfire spot which he’d likely used many times before. The rest of the day was given to lurking, loafing, listening, lazing. Thaba set his gill nets, gathered firewood, pitched his smaller tent and set his chair at the fire. We were all quiet most of the time, listening and loving as night fell. After we’d eaten we sat talking and listening some more. Then Thaba played his mbira – his ‘thumb harp’ – and sang to us; I’ll never forget his introduction as we switched on our tape recorder: ‘My name is Thaba; Thaba Kamanakao; Kamanakao is surname;‘
We chose not to move camp each day, electing to sleep three nights under a Jackalberry and three nights under an African Mangosteen, both giving welcome shade and birdlife. We had little food, but Thaba provided us with the fish he caught in his gill net each night.
I ate the barbel and he and Aitch the bream. Lucky me, it was delicious! He also loved barbel, but his lifestyle advisor – a sangoma? a shaman? a nutritionist? – had told him he wasn’t allowed it! So a myth robbed a man of a tasty and useful source of protein. The first night we were joined by newly-qualified Pommy doctors Louise and Richard and their guide “BT.”
When we moved camp from the camp Aitch named Jackalberry Camp, to her new chosen Mangosteen or Squirrel Camp, we decided we needed a bath on the way, so Thaba took us to a stunning clear lagoon, carefully checked for big things that could bite and then stood guard on the mokoro while we swam and rinsed – no soap, please! Anyone going to this beautiful inland delta: Pack some small swimming goggles and an underwater camera if you can. The clarity of that water is awesome.
Beautiful underwater pic by David Doubilet – to show the clarity.
Squirrel Camp nights were again spent cooking and sitting around the fire; talking and listening to Thaba playing his mbira and singing;
Days were spent birding the camp, hiking the island and an daily foray in the mokoro. Once we we were ‘moved off’ by an impatient ele, Aitch getting mildly reprimanded for turning round to get a fuzzy picture as we retreated. Another time Thaba – scouting ahead – spooked a herd of buffalo, who thundered in a tight mass towards us. We climbed the nearby termite mound – Thaba had told us to stay next to or on it – and they thundered all around us;
We would sally out daily on short mokoro trips,
Back before the sun got too high so we could loaf in our shady camp, where the squirrels and birds kept us entertained for hours. Six lazy, wonderful, awesome days.
One night a herd of eles moved in and we lay listening to their tummy rumbles. We kept dead quiet and just peered at them in the moonlight through the tent flap, as they had a little baby with them and we didn’t want to upset mama.
Then we headed back reluctantly for a last night at Oddballs. Warm showers under the open sky; cold beer & gin’n’tonics on the deck, ice tinkling in the glass; watching spotted-necked otters in the lagoon, lounging in comfy chairs. Topped off that evening by a big hearty hot meal prepared for us and plonked onto a table on the deck. We ate watching the sunset turn the water red.
And suddenly it dawned on us that, even though we did have to pitch our own tent again, Oddballs really IS a Luxury Lodge!
Then we flew east, to the Savuti.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Oddballs is fancier nowadays.
mokoro – dugout canoe; one mokoro, two mekoro, three mekoro, FOUR
sangoma – shaman? traditional healer? medicine man? says he communes with the ancestors; gives advice
mbira – thumb piano or thumb harp musical instrument
~~~oo0oo~~~
postscript 2018: This post was found by Thaba’s son, who informed me in the comments below that Thaba the legend had passed away. Damn!
R.I.P Thaba Kamanakao; You made our trip unforgettable.
~~oo0oo~~
Read an account of another 1993 trip to the Okavango Delta – Delta Camp right next to Oddballs) by Bill Keller, a US journalist for the NY Times based in Joburg.
~~~oo0oo~~~
(Here’s Trish’s 1993 photo album. I have copied, posted it here and discarded the album in my downsizing while selling our home in 2021)
~~o00o~~
We spent a few hours in Hluhluwe Game Reserve on my first visit to Jess on her field rangers course. We got in for free using our new Rhino Card. For ages now we have battled to see eles in KZN parks. In fact in Mkhuze last year I offered the kids a reward if they spotted fresh ele poo!! Not even the live animals themselves! Nothing.
As always Jess was the spotter: “Dad! Elephants! Stop!” She does NOT want to get close, so we stopped a good 200m away and watched as 30 eles of all sizes sauntered past on a road across a streambed from where we were parked. In another first, I was without my binocs! The last time that happened was 2003. I only had my spares that live in the car, not my proper Zeiss’. Can’t believe what getting ancient does to one.
Then “Dad, there are more” – and then more. And more. They were all headed for the Hluhluwe river so we found an overlook on a bend and watched and counted.
We counted 150 eles! Our ele drought has been broken. One teenage ele took exception to the presence of the warthogs, rushing them, shaking his ears. They basically ignored him, scampering away at the last minute and trotting straight back to their positions in defiance of him.
On the way out a lone ele ran out of the bush across the road right in front of us, making it 151.
~~oo0oo~~
So I took these –
. . to here –
and when they saw these harmless creatures –
they squealed and ran out of the campsite shouting “Pete! I’m taking an uber home!” and “Dad! I’m taking an uber home!” Pests.
We saw kudu, nyala, hippo, buffalo, giraffe, mongoose, zebra, warthog and hyena. Sindi pipes up on a drive: “There are no animals here!” She meant we hadn’t seen an elephant or a lion.
’twas like casting pearls before swine . . . .
They had a ball.
~~~~oo0oo~~~~
Dear old Ken died too soon. His tours were hugely educational – and such fun. You had to listen carefully or you’d miss his wicked Sergeant-Major little asides and throw-away comments. And you had to stay up late in the pub after the day ended to hear his best ribald Sergeant-Major jokes. We should have recorded them all. Well, here’s one, anyway.
We walked the Fugitive’s Trail from Isandlwana to Fugitive’s Drift. Ken arranged for a local man to take us to the start and fetch us at the end in his taxi – a shiny new Toyota Quantum like this:
On the way we stopped to look at something and Ken ordered us to hop out of the taxi. Then he paused, gave a slight grin and said:
“You could call that a ‘quantum leap.’“
~~oo0oo~~
Our traipse along the trail was not uneventful. Once again a bunch of pale people were out of their depth, just like in 1879. Also, our average age was way above that of the pommy soldiers, and we had no horses. Even though we weren’t being pursued by victorious Zulus, panting was heard and hearts fluttered. Some had to lie down a while.
We walked from the Isandlwana mountain to the Buffalo river at Fugitives Drift:
We were a bit slower than the fleeing poms at the uMzinyathi (Buffalo) River crossing. Didn’t want to get our shoes wet:
After the tour I thanked Ken for a wonderful weekend and awarded him the Victoria Cross for his brave endeavours. Or rather, my Victoria Cross-on-Zulu-Shield, which I had earned by running a 21km half-marathon from Isandlwana to Rorke’s Drift years earlier.
~~oo0oo~~
Back when I was running around the country visiting SpecSavers stores and opening new ones, I found myself in the village of Waterval Boven in a hostelry with a lovely pub run by an Irishman. Waterval Boven is an amazing place – a rock-climbing mecca. I bought the book called something like “The Menu to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe” which listed all the climbs – dozens of them! This is not it, but similar:
Here are two of those climbs:
Isn’t that amazing!?
The publican and owner of the Shamrock Inn was a raconteur and a wit and a delight. Said his brother was famous on SABC radio (Paddy O’Byrne, I think?). Seeing me all on my own, he chatted to me, served me sherry and guiness, and taught me some Irish, of which I have never forgotten “‘kinell“.
As in ‘kinell! It’s short for Fucking Hell . . fuckin’ ‘ell . . ‘kinell. A Pom might say ‘You don’t say!’ an American, ‘Beats me!’ – an Irishman will say ‘kinell!
His hostelry was special:
As is the whole village:
So for one fun evening I had me own personal Irishman feed me guinness, old brown; and blarney; guinness, old brown; and blarney. Rinse and repeat. Marvelous evening.
~~oo0oo~~
“Dad why are these people playing in the snow?” shouted my daughter Jessie.
This happened in 2014 but to tell the story I have to take you back to 1973:
On my way back home to South Africa from the ‘States, I flew from New York to London where I had arranged to meet a Harrismith friend Don Inglis, who was working in London for a year, so he knew the place. Turned out he had a rugby match (playing for some Saffer team against the London Irish**) so we scurried around Buck House circle and somewhere else where someone lived or died or married someone, and headed off to Wimbledon for the game in his little Austin something – with five rugby okes squeezed into it.
At the ground the players huddled in a cold shed to change and noticed they were a couple of boerkies short could I play? Sure, I said, but only half the first half, then I had to catch a tube to Heathrow. Thank goodness (it was sleeting outside) Don said ‘Rather don’t risk missing your flight’. So they ran out onto the mud with one blade of grass every ten yards without me and start puffing out steam and shoving some fat Irish blokes around.
Between scrums Don shouted out which tubes and buses I should catch and I left before the halftime whistle to head back to South Africa and home.
——-ooo000000——-
So forty years later (2014) daughter Jessie called out: “Dad why are these people playing in the snow?”
Playing what, Jess?
“I dunno, running around in the snow”. So I go and look: Rugby. London Wasps playing Northampton Saints. The pinkish poms don’t seem to notice there’s a blizzard swirling around their short-pants knees, but I see there’s a Wentzel playing and he’s probably feeling it.
So I explained to her the madness of Poms, and I explained how I hadn’t played rugby in the snow in London long ago. In Harrismith the u/11B’s played first thing Saturday mornings, so I had played on frosty white fields – kaalvoet nogal – but not in an actual blizzard.
My Jess looked at me as if I was stark staring mad. I think she was sorry she asked.
=======ooo000ooo=======
** London Irish? Old Wimbledonians (below)? I dunno. All Poms look the same to us Africans . . .
——-ooo000ooo——-
boerkies – Saffers
Saffers – South Africans
kaalvoet nogal – barefoot
Donald Coleman was my good mate and older side-kick in Harrismith up to around 1964. He died in a car crash (alone in the car) around 1975 (I have no detail of what exactly happened).
In around 2011 or 2012 I found a letter on the floor of my garage at 10 Elston Place.
It was from “your mate Donald” and consisted of one page (probably page 2 of a 2-page letter) and a scrap of envelope addressed to:
poel
rrismith
e Free State
A franked 2½c stamp in good condition is still on the scrap of envelope (but the date part of the franking was/is missing).
I suspect it fell out of the old Cape Colony post office stinkwood desk Dad gave me, as I had moved it to give it back to him before it fell to pieces.
The letter, in neat, flowing cursive writing in blue ink, said (I have kept the way he did his lines and spacing):
This is slightly exaggerated but between points
0 and 1 it is 50 miles and between 1 and 2 it is 13 miles and between
3 and 4 it is 14 miles. Even if you go at 10 m.p.h all the
way you will make it in a day. Well don’t take
too much equipment etc because you’ll shit yourselves
coming. Don’t forget to take hats and plenty of patching
equipment. If something goes wrong and you reach
Bergville or Winterton after dark just ‘phone us our
number is Winterton 2412.
Well I hope I’ve got everything down here, any-
way I still hope to run the Mountain Race
with you. I’m going to try harder this year.
It’s a pity I won’t be seeing you fellows
because I’ve got some jokes to tell you.
From your mate
Donald
Not a single correction or spelling mistake (oh, one tiny correction, changing your to you).
So it seems he had sent a map as well as the (presumed) 1st page of the letter. Obviously we were planning to ride our bikes to Winterton!
I gave the letter to his Mom, Jean. Wish I’d taken a photo of it and the stamp!
——————————————
I must ask Dad about the old stinkwood desk. Here’s the mystery: He gave me the desk when I was at 7 River Drive some time after 1990. In 2003 we moved to 10 Windsor Avenue and in 2005 we moved to 10 Elston Place.
Was it a Harrismith find? From when?
That could explain how the letter got in there, I spose. Suspicion: Did my folks open the letter and not pass it on!? Must ask Mom! We had done this around then, so maybe she wasn’t keen on another jaunt? Unlikely, though. Not like Mom not to give me a (very rare) letter addressed to Master PK Swanepoel!
I searched the desk again and found the rest of the envelope: It was franked on 30 March 1971. I was in Std 9, Donald would have completed his time at Estcourt High School. He would have been “a student at varsity” – an exalted state of being that I couldn’t WAIT for!
Later:
Nope – Dad says he bought the desk at Cannon & Findlay Auctioneers in PMB long after 1971. I have no idea how the 1971 letter could have got lodged in the back of the desk behind the drawers.
SO glad I found it though!
=======ooo000ooo=======
Travelling in the kombi! The T5 1,9TDi’s first trip to Lesotho! Strange travelling without Ma, but she’s decided to skip this one (first time!). She’s on a PE-EL trip for Pfizer plugging cancer products (‘oncology’). It’s winter 2009.
Stopped in at Gogo Mary’s in PMB. Had tea. Kids ‘watched’ a bit, but no “303 Disney” so SABC couldn’t hold them for long.
Tried to phone Pierre in Harrismith. When I hadn’t got hold of him by decision time, I turned for Oliviershoek Pass. We stopped on the pass at the lovely thatched restaurant and the kids did their traditional “Let’s tease Dad” by bringing a long grass stalk. “Don’t pull out the thatch!” I said again to their “innocent look”.
Spoke to Pierre on the way to Clarens. In Clarens I filled up the kombi and the Petrocard topped out at R500 – needed R600. Wasted time trying to speak to Firstcard, but ran out of signal.
Saw Destiny Castle near Fouriesburg. Border uneventful
Afriski PIN chalet. We have taken a small unit this time: Two bedrooms with bath only. No other room, and no self-catering stuff (no room for it!). Turned one bed in my room on its side to make room for the microwave on the bedside table. Checked for blankets: Plenty. Checked the gas hearth: Working well. Gas bottle outside: Full. The room soon warms up. It’s here:
Off we go to the ski shop while its still open to get kitted out with skis. Tom wants to “one-board” but chief instructor Rudi tells him not yet. Rudi (who’s admittedly biased in favour of skiing!) says there’s still lots to learn at eight yrs-old, m’boy. Methinks Rudi regards snowboarders as unruly hooligans.
I book a morning lesson for Jess & Tom with Charles. They get a HUGE welcome from all last year’s instructors: Wessel, Charles, Bronwyn, Rudi, Moruti at the ski lift, etc. Spoilt brats.
Off to supper in the room. Sure, I’m a cheapskate. We warm up a meal of Aitch’s pork sausage n baked bean pie for the first supper.
Jess & Tom are on the slope early the first morning, before the skilift has started.
“Can we go up the lift?” they chorused as it started up. Definitely not, says their law-abiding Dad. First, you have your lesson with Charles, then he’ll decide what you can do. “Aaw Dad, go on!” No. No means No.
Next minute Bronwyn arrives: “Hey, guys, you wanna come up the lift with me?”
“Can we Dad?” Um, of course you can (Bronwyn is a delightfully sexy, fun-loving, dare-devil, can-do instructor and expert skier who knows what she’s doing and has them sussed, so who’m I to argue!?).
And away they go – first up the ski lift. Jessie with Bronwyn, Tom on his own. Tom going all the way up to the very end of the line where the big knobs and instructors hang out. Jessie starts first, comes down snow-ploughing and zig-zag turning, graceful.
Halfway down Tom zooms past her going head-first straight down, hell-for-leather “Yee haa”.
Overheard at the ski lift: One of the new instructors saying to Bronwyn: “Is this the Tommy you were telling us about?” (this after he left his braking a bit late and crashed into the little hut at the foot of the lift, sending snow flying all over, a huge grin on his dial and waddled off to the T-bar, jumping the queue by about three people).
Later: TomTom: “Dad I weed in my pants”. All the way down the slope. Just couldn’t stop the fun long enough to find the loo!
LOTS of washing and drying of underpants, long johns, ski pant inner and outers. Then drying. Fuckit. Being a Dad is the pits 😉
Another day (early morning): “Dad, my tummy’s sore”. C’mon TomTom, you’re going skiing.
“No, but my tummy’s really sore, Dad”. OK you can ski for just an hour.
Suddenly Oops! Projectile vomiting! Five big spews – and NOT ONE on his clothes or on the bedclothes or anywhere but on the floor in a trail all the way to the bathroom.
Tom you’re a super-hero, I said. You didn’t hurl on any of your clothes! Well done! “Thanks, Dad”, he said with a proud smile. And “I feel much better now”.
Our Morning Ritual:
Have a wee – don’t forget that! It’s a mission once you’re suited up! Then it’s thermal unders on; Suits on; Blockout on; Gloves, boots, beanies.
Cereal in the chalet; Muti (Ritalin) after that; Full fry-up breakfast later in the restaurant; Homework on the restaurant deck;
THEN (at last, Dad!): First on the slopes – “Why do we have to wait?”
Midday sleeps and movies on the laptop. Charlotte’s Web gives a last showing before it locks up (a gift sent from the USA, won’t play again in SA). Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and Polar Express (sent from the UK) won’t even play once for us! Pigs! Thieves!
So The Incredibles and The Little Mermaid have to do duty (only after an Earobics session, though!).
Taking the microwave was a definite win. Rice sachets a big hit for suppers; Hot Milo before bed; The last night we splashed out on a restaurant meal.
Homeward bound we stop for a meal on Oliviershoek pass. Kids get to buy themselves a coolie and sweet in the shop. Joy!
The kombi gets 7,3l / 100km as we cruise along, no hurry, dropping from 3222m on the Mahlasela pass down to (probly) 222m in Westville. Yay! 1,9l diesel!!
I joined Jenny & Tabs Fyvie for a lovely week in the bush at their luxury lodge in Botswana. Right on the banks of the Limpopo river – a wonderful setting. Their friends Johan and Elsa from their days in Hoedspruit in the lowveld were there, plus other friends and fellow shareholders from the Eston / Thala Valley KZN district where they farm now.
Wonderful wildlife, including two leopards; Great birding including a lifer: a White-backed Night Heron hiding out in daytime. The bird pics are all off the internet cos I’m a binocular birder, not photographic.
Weather changeable, hot and dry or warm and wet. Cool nights. October 2013.
We had a wonderful time, with only one major catastrophe: Tabbo’s bread was not completely square; it was slightly buckled and squashed from being thrown in the back of my bakkie under my suitcase and boxes. Tabbo survived that distress thanks to Jenny’s laughter. When he gaans aan too much Jen pulls him up with a stern ‘Oswald!’ and then he knows OK, maybe I need to change tack here.
Ever the chef, Tabs cooked us a slap-up breakfast at the foot of the ____ hills on the huge property. Memorable days.
~~oo0oo~~
I sent these images – pinched off the ‘net – to interested friends after I got back. Some of the birds that fluttered down to drink at iMbuzi waterhole in Limpopo-Lipadi reserve in the two hours we sat there. What a feast for the eyes!
Plus, some of the nyonis seen in and around camp:
~~oo0oo~~
I drove back from Botswana in just under 12 hours. It’s been a long time since I did that. Pressure from the kids to get home, so I resolved to keep moving, but overnight with Pierre in Harrismith, or with my folks in Pietermaritzburg if I got sleepy. But I didn’t. I just kept trucking, stopping regularly for a walk and a bite and hot black coffee.
Got a huge welcome when I got in! “Daddy we MISSED you!” No cellphone comms in the bush!
~~oo0oo~~
I wrote to Dave Hill: I haven't told you yet that we had a long discussion about you (rolling cars, Hartebeespoort dam, etc)
He replied: Hi spekkies. I knew it would be dangerous letting you loose with those rubbishes. I bet they were full of heinous lies about me. You of course were mum.
.
Me again: No! I had nothing but praise. Which they laughed at.
Trevor, Pete, Butch and Bruce. Pete and Butch dishing the dirt on you about rolling cars and choking Linda Lovelace. Funny how some things stick in your throat memory.
~~oo0oo~~
..
photographersdirect.com (this site has since disappeared)
shutterstock.com (royalty-free thumbnail pics)
https://limpopo-lipadi.org/
~~~oo0oo~~~
Here’s a lovely overview:
Aitch’s twin sister Janet and her partner Duncan were running Makololo camp in the wonderful Hwange Reserve in Zimbabwe. Duncan had just recently built the camp for Wilderness Safaris and now they were the camp managers. And they invited us to stay! We flew in to Vic Falls, they picked us up and we had a long slow ‘game drive’ to the village of Hwange; then into the park and a real game drive to the camp in the south-east Linkwasha corner of the huge reserve.
The camp that Duncan built – stunning wood and thatch comfort with only the four of us in residence. One night a woodland dormouse fell into the soup, poor little bugger! He seemed alright.
Sylvester the grumpy lion chased after us with seeming intent! We didn’t stick around to ask him what was bugging him! We accelerated away from his waterhole.
Saw two firsts, there – two lifers! A Red-necked Falcon and a Caspian Plover.
wikipedia pics – thanks
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Geoffrey Kay, birding optometrist, ‘ornithoptometrist’?, put together a trip to Namibia in 1986.
We landed in Windhoek, picked up a VW kombi and rigged it up with a nice big hebcooler in the back. Ice, beer, gin & tonic. Now we were ready for any emergency.
West to Daan Viljoen game park where a lion’s roar welcomed us that first night. On through the Khomas Hochland into the Namib Desert. Then on to the Atlantic Ocean at Swakopmund. On to Spitzkoppen; Usakos; Erongo Mountains; Karabib; Omaruru; Otjiwarongo; and Outjo;
Then up to Etosha: Okakuejo, Halali and Namutoni camps. In Etosha we saw a very rare night ‘bird‘; Seldom seen.
Then on to Tsumeb; the Waterberg; Okahandja; And back down to Windhoek.
Geoff Kay, Jurgen Tolksdorf, Jill Seldon, Mick Doogan, Me & Aitch; Three optometrists and three normal people.
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We spotted 200 bird species that week! Also a new mammal for me: The Damara DikDik.
Jurgen Tolksdorf newbie birder spotted many birds for us with his keen eye. “What’s that?” he’d say. In Etosha one night we woke up to the b-b-b-b-bhooo of a white-faced owl near our tents. We shook everyone awake and grabbed our torches and binocs and went to look for it. Except Jurgen. He said “A WHAT?” and rolled over and went back to sleep with a snort. We searched in vain and got back to bed very late, disappointed.
After a short sleep, on our way back from breakfast we met Jurgen who had risen late after a long night’s sleep and was now on his way to eat. While we chatted he looked up in the tree above our heads and said “What’s that?”.
You know what it was, of course!
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