Tag Archives: Wildlife, Game Reserves

Hluhluwe Again

Flying ants, black rhino, wild dogs and a magic unidentified raptor.

Plus impressive thunderstorms, pelting rain, dry stream beds that ended up running merrily. The Hluhluwe river changed from dry sandy bed to quite a brown torrent between Friday night and Sunday morning.

A coucal bubbling in the rain, then listening intently till his mate or rival called then immediately hunching and bobbing into his call. Jess said “Look Dad: He’s laughing!”

Yep, three teen girls. Who were most impressed by the buffet breakfast and most unimpressed by the massive thunderclap that banged right overhead in the wee dark hours of Saturday. “Dad, I thought the thatch of our rondawel was going to catch fire!” says Jess. Also mostly unimpressed by the lack of wifi.

Samango and vervet monkeys with babies, bushbuck, nyala, duiker, impala, zebra, francolin, longclaws, lots of buffalo, a dozen white rhino; Two eles right at the roadside each munching a tree for breakfast; baboon; a hippo out of water; a few giraffe.

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~~oo0oo~~

That raptor: I thought ‘Augur Buzzard’ as I stopped the car just outside the reserve cattle grid gate on the main road. Three raptors were soaring in the wind welling up from a little ridge on the north of the road, right overhead. Surfing the airwave, they were.

Pale leading edge, rust-coloured trailing edge, black ‘fingers’; A falcon-like head pattern (yet not quite) and the size of a YBK or a marsh harrier. Soaring and diving spectacularly. Saw the underside mainly. Upperside I think brown-ish. Clean forgot to take a photo!

~~oo0oo~~

Thanks xeno-canto.org for the Coucal audio

Wilderness Walk – Mfolosi 1985

The Umfolosi Wilderness is a special place. Far too small, of course, but its what we have. I’m reading Ian Player’s account of how Magqubu Ntombela taught him about wilderness and Africa and nature. The idea of a wild place where modern man could go to escape the city and re-discover what Africa was like

My first trail was ca 1985, when I went with Dusi canoeing buddies Doug Retief, Martin & Marlene Loewenstein and Andre Hawarden. We were joined by a 19yr-old lass on her own, sent by her father, who added greatly to the scenery:

What a beauty! 'Our' 19yr old D___ (Donna?); Martin Lowenstein on right

A good sport – took our gentle teasing well

We went in my kombi and some highlights I recall were:

Doug offering “bah-ronies” after lunch one day. We were lying in the shade of a tree after a delicious lunch made by our guides: Thick slices of white bread, buttered and stuffed with generous slices of tomato and onion, washed down with tea freshly brewed over a fire of Thomboti wood. Doug fished around in his rucksack and gave us each a mini Bar One (“bah-ronie”, geddit?). Best tasting chocolate I ever ate, spiced as it was with hunger and exertion.

After the 5-night trail we went for a game drive. Needing a leak after a few bitterly cold brews I left the wheel with the kombi trundling along amiably and walked to the side door of the kombi, ordering Hawarden to take over the driving. Not good at taking orders, he looked at me, waited till I was in mid-stream out of the open sliding door and leant over with his hiking stick and pressed the accelerator. The driverless kombi picked up speed and I watched it start to veer off-road, necessitating a squeezed premature end to my leak and a dive for the wheel.

Thanks a lot, Hawarden! Pleasure, he murmured mildly. Hooligan!

————————

30yrs later Andre Hooligan Hawarden wrote:

“Hey, remember that cool walk we did in the game reserve when you had the tape recorder and we attracted the owl? Then next day we lay on the bank of the Umlofosi river and watched the vultures coming down for a lunch time drink and a snooze?

That was a wonderful experience. I’ve never forgotten it.”

My Namesakes in Mkhuze

A few of my namesakes at Mkhuze this weekend.

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Spot the two old rhinos in the shade under the tree? *Click on the pic*

Then you’ll also see how dry it was – the “water” is mainly mud and algae with a rich dose of dung mixed in.

– Nsumo pan had good water, so the Mkhuze river must have had rain upstream –

~~oo00oo~~

Don’t Forget the Meat

Ithala with Kids-002

On the way to Ithala we stopped at a Boxer store in Dundee to buy supplies. I deliberately didn’t go to the Woolworths or a shopping centre as the boys had been talking about dodgy places. As I stopped Josh and Tom said, “This place is dodge.”

Grabbing a trolley, I sent them off to buy the braai. “Buy charcoal, lighters, matches and meat,” I said. Then I thought “Better write that down”, so I tore my list in half and wrote down those four things for them:
Charcoal
Firelighter
Matches
Meat

We put all our goods in one trolley. I glanced at the meat they had bought while paying and stifled a grin: We were not going to be short of protein!
I paid, left the shop and loaded all the stuff we had bought into our trusty Ford Ranger bakkie.

“Oh! We forgot the charcoal”, they said.

“And the lighter and matches?” I asked.
Forgot that too.

In their minds they HAD remembered four things:
Meat, Meat, Meat and Meat.
They did the braai both nights and did a great job of it. While they were at it they spotted a Thicktailed Bushbaby (or nagapie) and a Large-spotted Genet in the headlamp light.

A lovely spot, Ithala Game Reserve.

~~oo0oo~~

Photographing Giraffe

Photogiraffing? It’s hard to photograph giraffe in Ithala Game Reserve when you have a Jack-in-the-Box popping up in the jeep right in front of your lens every time you’re ready to depress the shutter. And then the laughter gives camera shake.

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Ithala with Kids-001

New Lease On (wild) Life

Geoffrey Caruth is a doer. He gets going. He has run an indigenous nursery in an industrial area for decades, he ran an Olde Heritage Shoppe for years, he built a pond in a park – as a donation to the people of Westville; he has a lovely young (much younger!) wife and two ugly old dogs. He lives on the bank of the Palmiet river, on the boundary of the Palmiet Nature Reserve. Sure, he thinks that to be an Englishman is to have won the lottery in life, but hey, even he’s not perfect.

Recently he decided to re-introduce bushbuck into the 100ha Palmiet Nature Reserve in Westville, KwaZulu Natal and – typically – got off his butt. I would have talked about it, he rallied the troops. The bushbuck or imbabala (Tragelaphus sylvaticus) should be eminently suited to our valley and we hope they’ll thrive here.

So this week, 18 months after he decided to launch “Operation Nkonka”, we were in the Palmiet watching five beautiful bushbuck, three females and two males, jump out of the back of the truck and explore their new home.

Geoff and Warren Friedman watch with pride and angst:

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Nkonka release

A = Release site

B = Where I last saw a bushbuck

C = Our home

Later four more were released. Soon we’ll be fawning over their offspring, we hope!

~~~~~ooo000ooo~~~~~

nkonka is isiZulu for male bushbuck;

bushbuck in general are imbabala; the Cape bushbuck is our species; the other is the Harnessed bushbuck or kéwel, a different species in west and central Africa. Convergent evolution has them looking very similar but ours is closely related to the Bongo and the Sitatunga while the Harnessed is closer to the Nyala. The Nyala has the wonderful Latin name Tragelaphus angasi – you can imagine how that came about! (angazi in isiZulu can mean ‘I don’t know’).

~~~oo0oo~~~

Hluhluwe LUXURY Camping!

Its a sudden decision: Let’s go to a game reserve Dad! – that’s Jess on Friday night.
OK! (I’m chuffed!). I’m working tomorrow, so you guys buy food and gather the camping stuff. Be ready when I get home at 2:30pm and we’ll go to Mkhuze. Remember the tent, mattresses, pillows, your swimming cozzies.

Cecelia helps them. Minenhle & Andile join us. As we head north to Zululand I realise we’ll be cutting it fine. The gates close at 7pm and it’s 3:30pm already, so there’s a change of plan: We’ll go to Hluhluwe/Mfolosi instead. Means no camping and no swimming.

At the gate the usual story: A pessimistic Ooh, you haven’t booked? Mpila is full. The bushcamps are full.

Keep trying, I say cheerfully. Oh! OK, I’ll try Hilltop camp. Just then the kids walk into the office and he gets interested in me and the kids, asking all sorts of adoption questions and Where’s my wife? and Is she a Zulu lady? and so tries harder when there’s no reply on the radio. Will you phone them on your cellphone? he asks me. Sure. We get thru, there’s a chalet available, we book and head off on what turns into a free night drive!

Tom spots an elephant running towards the road ahead of us, ears flapping. I slow down and it turns onto the tar road and walks determinedly towards us, causing great panic on the back seat. We reverse and wait, reverse and wait, giving him plenty of space, till he eventually finds a mud wallow, drinks and heads off into the bush, allowing us to proceed. It’s dark now and later on two more eles loiter on the road and we just wait patiently, watching them in our headlights. All the kids have watched the videos of the elephant flipping the car, so they’re nervous and don’t want to go anywhere near eles. A look at the video will show how many warnings the people in the car ignored.

– stupid human video –

At Hilltop they’re waiting for us, they give us our key and bring us an extra set of bedding and towels for the fifth body. Bleeding luxury for us were-going-to-be campers.

Hlu Feb'14 (52)
– girls in their element – NOT camping –

AND the big breakfast buffet in the restaurant is included.

The dawn chorus the next morning was fantastic. In that magic spell between pre-dawn and the screaming banshees waking up I made a cup of coffee and sat out on the deck listening in the half light. As the kids started waking two trumpeter hornbills landed in full view and the kids got a good look at them through my telescope. I issued a decree banning all post-5000BCE music and they just nodded, acquiescent (!). So birdsong was it.

Hluhluwe Feb '14

Meals? All I had to do was eat.

~~oo0oo~~

Generous Souls

Off we go to St Lucia estuary for a camping long weekend. Let’s take the minimum guys, we can buy food locally. Just clear out the fridge and bread bin and let’s go. We’ll buy charcoal and meat and etc from the local Spar. I won’t even take any wine! Rather we hit the road now, shop later.

Let’s take a tent for the three teenage girls, and the twelve year-old fella and I will sleep in the back of the pickup. The simple life.

Except I realise at the first tollgate that I have left my wallet in Westville. Complication. To turn back or not. In my rucksack I find Tom’s saving card, daily withdrawal limit R300. I had just changed his password, as we had not used the account for ages, so we were good to go. We just gotta be frugal, kids, we got R300 kuphela.

And that’s where they blew me away. All four of them said “Dad, we’ve got money! You can have our money, Dad”. They each had R200 pocket money for the weekend and offered it freely! What stars.

Thanks guys, I may need that, but I have enough to fill up with diesel and we’ll just go easy and discuss it before we spend anything, OK?

The next morning I managed to activate my eWallet and cellphone banking at an internet cafe so could now draw R1500 a day! Problem solved! I gave them each R100 to thank them for their generous offers. Their eyes looked like chocolates and ice creams!

Off we went to the game reserve (entrance fee R245) and to the water park (R120 for the four of them). We wuz rich! The girls bought swimming shorts with their own money.

St Lucia camping 2

The next day that amount I could draw had ‘kindly’ been reduced to R200 (“for my safety” – Thanks FNB!), so I had to make the speech again, and again they rallied around with their offer of chipping in, but with Tom’s R300 and my R200 we were fine. We ate boerie rolls both nights – cheap!

– St Lucia camping –

Here’s an isimangaliso* pan with buffalo, waterbuck and zebra (click on the pic). The Indian Ocean is just behind that high forested dune:

St Lucia Mar 2014 (5)

Tom got on with fishing . .

. . while the teenage girls did what teenage girls do . .

– Jess took a lovely picture of some grass – with a kudu as a backdrop –

~~oo0oo~~

*isimangaliso means ‘miracle, wonder, surprise’ in isiZulu

Jess the Spotter

Walking single-file to supper in Thembe Elephant Park camp one early evening with Jess bringing up the rear.
“Dad there’s a snake!” she said, and pointed out this vine snake at about her eye level two foot off the path. We had all walked past it.
Beautiful. Aitch took the pic.
She’s a great spotter, our Jess. While Tom waxes lyrical all the time, she’ll say “What’s that?” and we’ll see some new creature.

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The Considerate Crocodile

a posse of blondes invades Tom’s nest!
up you get, lazybones!

Now we’re driving home. Dad, did you see the lions come to drink and the one crocodile ate the little lion cub?

No, TomTom, where did you see that?

On TV.

Dad, if I was a crocodile I’d just live on the water and not eat babies. I’d be a vegetarian to other animals!

~~oo0oo~~

Don’t complain to us . . .

The day we moved into Elston Place Sheila brought Jess & Tom to the new house as we moved our stuff from Windsor Avenue a couple of kilometres away in Westville.

Standing on the driveway,  four-year-old TomTom looked up and saw the resident vervet monkey gang precariously wobbling across a wire high above.

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He started fulminating against them, and They shouldn’t be here and What did they think, and This was OUR house . .

“TomTom, they belong here and we welcome them and we live in harmony with them, my boy” says Dad.

Unimpressed, Tom muttered:
“Well, they mustn’t come and complain to us if they get shocked!”

Bicycles in the Bush

Dusted off the bikes and threw them on the back of the bakkie and headed off to Albert Falls Dam for our first mountain bike ride in years. Picked up a friend for Tom and a friend for Jess. Two more bikes.
Got there too late for the official start, so no hurry. Took the bikes to be pumped up (about six flat tyres out of ten) and brakes fixed. Off we went on a 10km ride through the nature reserve.
What a bunch of wimps. There was so much whining it sounded like King Shaka airport.
A small herd of bewilderbeasts and zebra thundered past us, spooked by the other riders in the actual race. Also saw nyala, impala and oribi.

Then we saw fresh rhino dung and the panic set in. “What if they charge us, Dad?” Relax! Just pedal on! And hush. Enjoy the day, I say. “We wanna go home”, they say. Eventually they go on strike and say “No further!”, folding their arms.

So I head off into the distance and they’re forced to follow, muttering something about cruelty.

They enjoyed it. “When can we do it again, Dad?”

That grassland can kill you, man!

Bill lives in one of the council houses at the bottom of our cul de sac. Nice chap. I think he worked for the eThekwini corpse, and I’m guessing  that’s how he got to rent here. But I’m guessing.

Nice chap. Worried about people not doing things the way he wants them, and always quick to point out anything wrong.

Comes up to me in the PnP supermarket this weekend and says:

DO I KNOW!? He saw a big mfezi in my garden! AND:

Do I know what an mfezi is?!

Wow! That’s great! A Mocambique spitting cobra, Bill! Where’d you see it?
In your garden.
Yes, but where? I’d love to see it.
That thing can kill you man!

Actually I think what Bill means is “You should cut your grass!” See, I have sections of neatly-mown lawn. But I also have meadow, and a beautiful section of grassland, and it’s visible from the gate.

10 Elston Garden Jan'14 (9)
– lush meadows –

So sadly, no mfezi in my garden, I don’t think.

I haven’t told Bill about the concept of wu wei – “Masterful Inactivity.” Don’t want him to think I’m weird.But you can learn about my secret vice here.

Elston Garden Xmas Day 2018
– these guys love my meadows –

~~~oo0oo~~~

Careful in the veldt! Mapungubwe

Beware of things lurking when out for a carefree stroll in the veld.

Outside Mapungubwe in October 2013 I spotted a male lion running free on the tar road. As I got closer he ducked under a little bush. Amazing how I would never have spotted him had I not seen him dive under it!

The can in the foreground of this picture is on the edge of the tar road, the bush is at the bottom of a steep little bank – about 3m down.

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He’s there, believe me! A full-grown lion is under that little bush. A short while later he bolted and ran along the fence in the opposite direction to where I was going on my way to Limpopo-Lipadi in Botswana. I was too slow with my phone camera. (this story repeated – more or less – here).

kaoxa-camp-mapungubwe

The stay at Kaoxa was great. When I told hostess Virgeenia I’d been sent there by my friend, young David Hill, she exclaimed:

Hau, that one he makes us laugh!

I had the camp to myself and prepared an elaborate bachelor’s supper, mainly liquid: A Black Label beer, then a couple G&T’s with ice & lemon, biltong, crisps and tomato sarmies. Made with old-style slice-it-yourself white bread. Whattafeast.

Next morning the ants had tried to hijack a stick of biltong, but had only moved it about 40cm. A few thousand of them put a thin stick on their backs for a getaway, but they were too slow.

The chalet was clean, comfortable and had a lovely porch overlooking the valley. The communal kitchen was well-equipped and the fridge was cold with lots of ice. I enjoyed a magic sunset and sunrise. I watched distant eles in the valley for supper, one under a baobab; the Mocking Chats woke me on the thatch roof, squirrels scurried along the branches and I had a klipspringer in full sunlight for breakfast:

Mapungubwe Kaoxa (26).JPG

Later I checked out the Drifters mobile safaris camp on Kaoxa land. What a special site, ensconced in the rocky hillside among huge boulders!

Mapungubwe Kaoxa (38).JPG

Interesting sights were an ele looking tiny next to a baobab and a giraffe looking short next to a massive free-standing boulder, the landscape miniaturising these large beasts.

—–Original Message—–
From: pete swanepoel:
Did I tell you I saw a beautiful male lion running along the fence on the tar road outside Kaoxa? Obviously escaped from the De Beers reserve, he was as worried as hell! When I drove up next to him he dived under a bush and wouldn’t move, even when I put my foot out and rustled the grass.
See the picture I took. I’ll be even more wide awake walking in the bush now when I see how little cover a big male lion needs!
Cheers
——
On 2013/11/07 David Hill wrote: Did you stay at Kaoxa? How was it? Let me know so I can let Duncan have some feedback. We were up there for his 60th beginning August – twenty five old conneko’s – beautiful.