More South Arica

Sunday 7 August: Blyde River Canyon

From Hazyview we drove north-west to Graskop, then turned north along the Blyde River Canyon. This is variously described as the 2nd or 3rd largest canyon in the world.

Unfortunately, it being a long weekend, everybody else decided to see it as well - all the lookout areas were very crowded. This, combined with the persistant smoggy haze, limited our picture taking pretty severely. However on Wednesday we will drive back to Hazyview, so we'll have another chance to look at the canyon.

It really is worth a look - it's wide and deep and long, with some spectacular vistas, especially through the Drakensberg mountains.

Tshukudu Game Lodge

Tshukudu is one of many privately operated game reserves clustered around the fringes of the Kruger national park. It covers 5000ha of bushveldt - big enough that the resident rangers don't necessarily know where any of the animals will be on any given day.

We went out in a Landrover with one of the rangers and a bunch of other guests for a three hour drive. Within five minutes of leaving the main compound we saw a ground hornbill - an enormous black bird with a red bill. This is a rare and endangered species, so it was a great experience to see one up close, in the wild. Other animals we saw included giraffes, hippos, various antelopes, rhinos and a pair of geriatric buffalo. We aso saw a lot of smaller ceatures incuding bush babies, and various birds. We got some reasonable pictures, and with a bit more practice over the next few days, we should do better.

Dinner tonight was a "brassai"- an outdoor meal where we all sat around in a circle of tables facing an open fire. Good fun and good food.

Monday 8 August: Tshkudu

Again we went out driving with one of the rangers and saw quite a few different types of animals. Tshkudu has a captive breeding program for lions, and we drove through the various lion enclosures at feeding time. (The enclosures are very large - many hectares each). It was quite an experience to be in an open vehicle only five metres or less from these very big cats.

In the afternoon we went hunting elephants. This is the end of the dry season, when all the animals gather around the waterholes. We found three adult elephants and one baby together with three rhinos and a whole bunch of buffalo together at one waterhole.

One of the adult elephants had been orphaned, and brought up by the staff at Tshukudu. Consequently, she is very happy coming up to humans and demanding fruit.

Tuesday 9 August: Walking with the lion

Because Tshkudu has a breeding program, and also takes in many orphaned animals, there is always a juvenile that will walk through the bush with the guests. At the moment, it's a young lion named Shimba. Shimba is a bit fussy, and will only go walking if his best friend (a young labrador) comes along too. To complicate matters his new best friend, a servil cat, also likes to join in. It's an amazing experience walking along in the dawn light with a 3/4 grown lion rubbing against your legs like a cat.

Kruger national park

Although we expected the game viewing at Tshukudu was better than in the Kruger park, we felt we had to see the place first hand. So we set off after breakfast.

The park is enormous - we covered 350 kilometres, and only saw a small portion of it. Unfortunately we misjudged the time required, and ended up hurrying to the exit to get out of the park before 6:00pm. (The gates close, and if you are still on the road inside there is a hefty fine to be paid). We missed many great photo opportunities as we just didn't have time to stop.

Part of the reason we were so late is that we found ourselves at the wrong end of a dead-end track, with a herd of elephants barring our exit. There were probably 6 or 8 adults, a couple of juveniles, and a small baby. One of the adults started getting extremely aggro, flapping its ears and stamping its feet. I don't know anything about elephant psychology, but this didn't look like a good sign. So we slowly backed the car as far away as we could (which wasn't far) and waited for the animals to disperse.

Wednesday 10 August: Goodbye Tshkudu

After breakfast we packed up and set out again for Hazyview. We decided to go through the Blyde canyon again, hoping that the crowds had gone. Sadly the crowds had gone, but the fog rolled in and we hardly saw anything. Visibility on the road was extremely poor, and it was a very slow and tiring trip back to Hazyview.

Just to make matters worse, I (Paul) have hurt my back somehow. The people at Rissington are trying to organise a physio for me - I'm not looking forward to the long drive back to Johannesburg, followed by the 10 hour flight to Cologne. :(

This will be our last night in South Africa - it's gone much too quickly, and we will definitely be back.