So Much to See! So Much to Learn!! WITH PHOTOS

 Friday, September 16, 2022

I'm up at 4:30. A continental breakfast is available before we leave at 7:00; but I was too bushed (giggle) to do any morning prep stuff last night! Before we even leave our "tent" we see a whole flock of guinea fowl (about 40!), a kudu wandering through our yard, a baboon scampering in the opposite direction and another (or maybe the same one, who can tell?) sitting atop a huge termite mound, surveying his kingdom!

Kudu

Guinea fowl with their blue heads

Impala

As usual, everything is too amazing! There's toast and four kinds of cereal and yogurt and fruit and coffee and tea. Sam gathers the walkers and we depart pretty much on time.  Last night Sisa had announced that the people who rode in his vehicle yesterday afternoon would be this morning's walkers/riders and the people from Sam's would walk in the afternoon, so there was no shuffling around and deciding who went where.  So clever!

Sam suggests that we leave our jackets behind because it will be warming up quite quickly.  Then he laid out the ground rules, which all revolve around safety.  Stay in a single file behind him, spaced out so that if he stops quickly we don't end up in a heap! Be quiet.  Remember that we are the intruders and do nothing to harm the animals.  Rest assured that he has everything we might need - a first-aid kit, a two-way radio, and a really impressive rifle for which the ammo costs ten dollars a round!  (Sam went to school for four years to learn everything that's needed to be a guide!)  We set off to see what we can see and learn about the bush. 

We find (no, of course it's Sam who will find everything!) a lot of guinea-fowl feathers.  Sam says someone had a meal.  He can tell that the feathers have been cut off and not merely molted. Then there's a wallowed out area that was made by the elephants looking for roots.  They create depressions that will fill with water when the rains come in a month or two. Next comes an impala midden.  This is a communal toilet area for the females where they poop and also urinate.  The male comes along and smells to see if a female is in estrus.  If so, he will also pee there to cover her scent from other males.  Interestingly, a leopard might come and roll in it so that when he creeps up on a herd of impalas, he will smell like them and have a better chance of catching his dinner!

Impala midden

Elephant track

Sam finds us some elephant tracks.  The front feet leave a found footprint with intricate designs in it.  The back feet leave oblong prints, also designed, and you can tell how fast the elephant was walking by the spacing between the front and back prints, and you can tell the direction because the leading edge will have dug in further.

Off in the distance there is a small herd of impalas (They say they are twenty for a dollar here!) and we see how close we can get without spooking them!  Not very close, even though we are down wind.  Sam shows us that he carries a sock filled with flour so that when he shakes it, it shows which way the wind is blowing!

Next he finds the skull of a kudu.  The eyes are on the sides of the head, as it true for most prey animals and the ear blades are huge which is why they have such excellent hearing. The horns are attached to the skull and are never shed.  If one gets broken, maggots can infest the broken horn and eventually kill the kudu.

flour-filled sock

Kudu skull

Zebra tracks

Leopard droppings

Baboon skull

Elephant damage

Impala skull

African hawk eagle feather

Dove feathers

Funnel spider

fire-resistant tree

from inside it's fruit

Looks like it has been burned, right?

poop from the common duiker

and his skull

We see some zebra tracks and most promisingly some leopard dung!  It is light bluish gray from the bones they eat! There's a big cat around here somewhere! Next we see a baboon skull and there's no question about what it is!

Elephants scratch their backs against trees if their mud bath hasn't gotten rid of the insects that get into their wrinkles. The small skull is from a small impala.

We've seen lots of birds; but this feather is from an African hawk eagle.  You can tell the leading edge because it is thinner and straighter.  Next are some dove feathers.  I guess this one correctly!

Sam teases a funnel spider; but he won't come out of his funnel.  Guess Sam was too scary!

There's a tree that secretes a fluid that protects it from fire!  And it exfoliates periodically.  This one hasn't been burned, even though it appears to have been! It's bright red seeds are prized by the baboons and also by people because they are legumes, filled with protein. Next, more poop, this is smaller than the impalas and comes from the common duiker. And there was even more that I think I've already forgotten!!

We have made it to our waiting vehicle so that we can also take a ride to see what we can see.  We pick up one of our group who wasn't up to leaving as early as we did, and we are also told that there is a surprise awaiting us! (We walked about two miles.)

"port-a-potty"!

There is even more to see and learn on the ride. There's a brown snake eagle in the top of a tree and Sam says that they work in pairs.  They prey on guinea fowl, which hide under bushes, so one stays in the air while the other lands and flushes out the bird.  And then it's all over for the guinea fowl!

the sable antelope

elephant skull

so many termite mounds!

Wildebeestes

Tsessebe

We find a small herd of sable antelope!  Haven't seen those before!  And a couple of zebras and a whole herd of impalas and wildebeests at a watering hole.  And there are baboons there, too!

We drive on and Sam says there must be a wedding!  Let's go see!  Turns out they have set up an entire lunch for us out here in the bush, complete with two heavy wooden tables, chairs, place mats, a buffet table with drinks!! Unbelievable all the trouble they've gone to for us! And our other half has joined us so we all can eat together.  What coordination!

We head back to camp and leave the four guys to clean up!  Who lives like this???

We've got three hours of down time!!! Yay!  I can write this blog post and maybe edit some more photos! And we can each take an outdoor shower!!  That's a blast!  The water is as hot as you want and the air is breezy and cool! 

It's time to go back to the reception area for afternoon tea, before Sisa's detail-filled lecture on lions.  He fills our heads with facts including how prides are constructed, how territories are marked, how other males are dealt with and how a younger brother may demonstrate his submissiveness (Hint - you don't have to mate with a female!)

And we're off for our afternoon game drive with Sisa and it has an amazing climax!  But first we watch the baboons playing on the lake shore.  Then we mount up and see more impalas, a large flock of guinea fowl, a stunning bird called a European roller (I actually spotted that one while we were watching a gray hornbill), a flock of wildebeests, a herd of impalas, and several tsessebes, one of the fastest African antelopes.

Good grief!  It's High Tea!!

There is a truck kicking up a large dust cloud coming towards us on our one lane track.  It's the man who started our lodge and has for others!  He tells us that there's a herd of about 400 cape buffalo further down!  We head in that direction.  Oh my god!!  It's like the days of the old west before the white men came and killed all the buffalo!!  The herd is moving from our left to right and we notice more that are coming from the other direction!  Will there be a stand off?  A confrontation?  Suddenly they all turn and face us...that's a pretty scary sight!!  It lasts for an eternity before they decide that we aren't really a threat and head back in the direction that the larger group had come! How obstinate they are!  Sisa says they look at you as though you owe them something!!  I can't wait to have enough wifi to send out one of the videos!!

They stretch all across the horizon!

Sundowner

We head back the way we came, pass the tsessebes again and lots of zebras before we rendezvous with Sam's bunch for our sundowner drinks and snacks!  Them it's time to continue our game drive, although it is now after sunset!  We can barely see the buffalo now! Then there are a couple of sable antelopes and a boing boing! (March hares) before we are ready to head back to the lodge for dinner (My god!  Our sixth meal of the day!) We are so stuffed we can barely move!  Mr. Khulu and his wife come to say hi and after dinner it is time to say good-bye to Sam.  We've gotten envelopes from the lodge in which to place his tip but we don't see anyone else do it!  Perhaps they are most circumspect than we!

The Milky Way!!

Anyway, we're leaving in the morning and have to have our suitcases on the bed by 8:00, so it's an early night - ish!  It shouldn't be hard to sleep tonight!!

NEWS FLASH!  I figured out a work around for my camera!!  As long as I don't extend it past 200 it works great!  It's not much less than it's max of 250 so I'm a pretty happy camper''!  I guess I don't have to buy a Samsung S22+ after all!!