Rotarian Keith's Travels - Part 2
After a week in Cape Town, my "bucket list" trip continued with the second part of the South African segment. We left early on Friday morning to board a South African Airways flight to Johannesburg, where we picked up a car left the airport and immediately became lost in construction detours! I got off the M road and ended up in a plaza where I went into a store and got directions! Once we got to the new part of the highway it was plain sailing!
Our four-hour trip was broken up by a stop at a service centre where we experienced a cool change in the weather. It dropped from 26 to 12C, with fog! So our trip took a little longer than expected. This inclement weather lasted through the weekend and, other than a trip into Nelspruit, we stayed in our facility at the lodge and only ventured out on Sunday afternoon when the weather appeared to be breaking. Our disappointment at having two "wasted" days was soon forgotten when we spent the next three days having an incredible experience. Not that I didn't get out and do some bird watching and photography at Sudwala Lodge, which is set against 500 foot cliffs and bounded by a fast moving river with lots of trout. The only wildlife we saw were monkeys.
After a Sunday afternoon "teaser" where we visited Bridal Falls in Sabie and a short trip on Long John's Pass (too foggy to do much of it), we retraced our steps to Sabie, a tourism and centre for logging (clear cut and reforestation). We saw the church which was built through funds given by the Italian prisoners of war who were held there during the 1914-18 war. It had beautiful grounds but were locked due to vandalism and theft. Unfortunately, this is all too common a problem in South Africa. We then carried on to see many fantastic views from the escarpment which runs some 300 miles north to south. Gods Window and Blyde River Canyon have some beautiful outlooks onto mountains, dams and the low veld. The elevation if often 3,000 feet which adds to the spectacle. We also visited some beautiful waterfalls as part of the journey, Lisbon and Berlin Falls were particularly stunning. Wherever you stop there are local people selling handicrafts. There was not too much that appealed to us, due largely to the size of the carvings. The day was sunny, beautiful but not too hot- around 20C.
We returned to Sudwala Lodge for supper which was a South African "Braai"-a barbecue over hot embers of hard wood, which had been started in the afternoon. The Lodge provided the salads, potatoes, vegetables and each person or party provided the meat. We had purchased some ostrich steaks which were very tasty! We met another couple from Pretoria, who owned a time share at the Lodge. Clive is a bird watcher so we got on famously! We also heard about the snakes around their property in Pretoria: cobra, puff adder and black mamba. I recall my Dad speaking of black mambas while he was in South Africa. If you are bitten by one your survival is no more than five minutes! A Cobra bite may allow you to get to a hospital for a treatment of anti venom and a puff adder's bite causes the muscle to atrophy and become infected often needing limb amputation. Luckily, we didn't see any snakes, although the puff adder is lazy, usually won't get out of your way and will bite if stepped on or too close for comfort. Needless to say when I was out walking the river trying to spot birds or other wildlife I often kept my eyes to the ground!
Tuesday and Wednesday were our days for the safari which we had booked through Sundowner Tours out of Nelspruit. What an amazing two days! We were picked up by Henk, our driver and guide, at 5:30 am and entered Kruger National Park, where we immediately saw impala (there are an estimated 30,000 in the park). Another 0.5 km on, we saw our first lion followed, a short distance further, by a full pride where there had been a recent kill. We then saw zebra, rhinos, African buffalo, hippos, elephants, zebra, many varieties of antelope, water monitors ( a large lizard some two meters long) and giraffe. There were many vultures, horn bills, birds of prey, water birds and ox-peckers riding on the backs of African buffalo. We just missed a sighting of a leopard, the most difficult of the big 5 to psot but had four of the five so we were pretty happy! We had a late breakfast in Skukuza in the park and continued to see hippos, and great view of a male lion and rhino up close. Later in the day we drove to our safari camp in Kruger park, Nkambeni. Henk had us going when he kept saying that we need to make sure that we put the padlock on the tent zipper. We drove on to the camp and had an encounter with three elephants as we drove on a dirt track. We stopped the van and the male and female passed in front of us, however, the young elephant was more aggressive and charged us, which turned out to be a mock charge, with Henk having the van in reverse in case he really meant it. Just a youngster feeling his oats!
We arrived at the safari camp to see that the "tents" were chalets on stilts with solid roofs, canvas sides and full en suites with an option to shower outside if we wished. Once we had settled in, we were loaded on to a safari van for a night ride to spot nocturnal animals. Not much was doing, saw some hippos at long distance and one small cat along with a number of members of the antelope family: duiker, impala, sable and kudu. We ended the evening with a beautiful buffet dinner at the lodge.
We were disappointed with the night drive,but had high hopes as we arrived for our 5:00 am morning bush walk. There were three of us: Judy, Lily, a Canadian working for UNEP (UN Environmental Program) and living in Paris, and me with two rangers. They both had rifles! Aaron had 45 years of experience and was a fantastic tracker and Sam had worked for 2-1/2 years and hailed from Tunbridge Wells in the UK held a degree in botany and wild life management along with an intensive 6 month training program at Kruger. He had a very good handle on animal "poo" and track and was pretty good at identifying birds. We saw zebra, duikker, impala and kudu up close and heard a hyena in the dense bush. We learned about how termite mounds were formed and their colonies. We spotted a number of zebra then Aaron heard signs of rhino. We learnt how to use cover and quiet to get close to wild life. In this case, we were able to view a female rhino and her baby grazing on the far side of a small gulch. We tracked about 1 km to reach the rhino and we tracked the mother and baby for another km. We then decided to disengage and return to our vehicle. We spotted a number of vultures, eagles and other birds and soon came across a recent kill of a buffalo probably by a lion. We flushed a number of vultures from the body and, happliy, made our way up wind of the kill. We finally got back to our vehicle and while the bush walk is usually two hours, ours was four! Sam had phoned the lodge to make sure that they saved breakfast for us!
Henk was there to pick us up but due to the lateness we went via Nelspruit and met Henk's wife before heading back to Sudwala Lodge. We were going to a Rotary meeting the following day, arriving in Nelspruit only to find I had left a bag behind. I would have missed most of the meeting by back tracking to Sudwala and we decided, after retrieving the bag to proceeded directly to Johannesburg where we stayed overnight.
Our third week started by a BA flight from Johannesburg to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. We stayed at the Kingdom a beautiful spot where our balcony faced on to a small patch of grass surrounding a pond with monkeys, hornbills, bee eaters (birds) and baboons. We slept under mosquito nets as we were in a serious Malaria area. We used our first of five days to take it easy and make a quick visit to the Victoria falls hotel, a historic building frequented by Livingstone. We spent the afternoon shopping under the watchful eye of the tourism police. Zimbabwe does not want any repeats of aggression experienced in other parts of the country.
After a relaxing first day, we joined a group to tour Victoria Falls. Water was only going over part of the falls but where it was it was pretty spectacular and no building surrounding it, unlike Niagara Falls! It reminded Judy and me of Iguasu Falls in Brazil. Lots of monkeys and baboons. One women had her backpack stolen by a baboon. We did watch a bungee jumper drop from the suspension bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe. I asked the guide if they would take us by the "Big Tree" and they were happy to oblige. The Baobab tree is 25 meters high and the trunk is also 25 meters in circumference. Its roots help cure or ease malaria, the fruit are to eat or to make various objects. The wood is a balsa type and is easy to carve.
Later that day we were picked up at the hotel to take a sunset cruise on the Zambesi with drinks and snacks. There were lots of birds in evidence, as well as hippos, elephants and crocodile. We moved fairly close to a female croc who was lying on her eggs. All in all a very good tour complete with a lightening show and heavy rain from a very unusual thunderstorm for his time of the year.
Our last full day was dedicated to our trip to the Chobe River in Botswana. We were on our own on the bus ride to the border crossing except for some Zimbabweans who were given a ride with us! It took for ever to get across the border as our driver was around 30 minutes late. Africa time! Once we got through the border we had to walk across pads with disinfectant to stop the spread of foot and mouth disease. We had around 20 minutes to drive to our pontoon boat docked at the Chobe River Lodge.
Once we got underway and reported to the station at the entrance to Chobe National Park we began to see hippos and elephants and numerous shore birds, waders, eagles, spoonbills and ibis. Crocodiles were plentiful. We beached the pontoon on the shore on the Namibean side to photograph a crocodile which was around 4 meters long. It sat there with its jaws open, apparently to allow the body to cool. Behind the croc was a water monitor, searching out crocodile eggs. No luck there, this croc was not going to budge! As with each day since we were arrived in Zimbabwe, it had been around 34C with 90% humidity. There were many elephant in the park and trees were denuded by them. Botswana has considered culling but decided not to go ahead. We picked up some cavorting hippos and baby elephants going down to the water yet be under the watchful eye of the parent.
We motored back to the lodge and had a nice lunch before heading out on a game drive in Chobe National Park. Our first sighting was a leopard, difficult to see, but I did get a good shot of his coat! Lots of elephants and antelope. Birds and crocodiles were the most active and we saw a smaller crocodile grab a catfish and shake it violently in its jaws and then eat the fish. We saw a fish eagle a few meters away eating a fish unconcerned at what the crocodile was doing. We came upon a lion kill of a baby elephant which will be moved once th meat has been stripped. The mother would visit and linger over the bones for years unless they were moved away by the park rangers, It was an excellent drive with another very knowledgeable guide. We had a break under the acacia trees before heading back to the highway to drop off most of our group to cross the Zambesi at the confluence with the Chobe. We then made our way back to the border crossing and our bus trip back to Victoria Falls.
After dinner, packing and a good night's sleep we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and headed out to the airport for our return to Johannesburg. Once in South Africa we picked up our luggage and went through customs and security to pick up our Air France flight overnight to Paris. So long Africa, you have given us both a wonderful experience we will never forget!