Good to be back in the bush again
I have just returned from the morning Game Drive, I know it doesn’t happen that often, but it was a blast.
The old saying “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” springs to mind. I keep threatening Marius that I plan to try and get out on a more regular basis, and then one thing leads to another and the opportunity slips away. Therefore when the chance came at short notice, I grabbed it with both hands and found myself behind the wheel last night heading out on the afternoon Safari, and it suddenly all came flooding back to me, driving, listening to the radio, watching the road and pretending I really knew where I was going!!
Within the first hour, we had “bumbled” into a buffalo bull wallowing in the shallows of Wallingford Dam, at least I think that’s what it is called these days, while we had an awesome sight of two Hippos yawning and displaying in the same waterhole, a very entertaining start to the Game Drive. Not even a couple of kilometres from the dam we encountered six rhino milling around the open clearings towards McKenzie’s old airstrip, the one female with an enormous horn, see picture below.
Heading north again, looking for a good spot to have an evening sundowner stop, we encountered a young female leopard out on the hunt, and spent time watching her stalk a Grey Duiker for about half an hour before it sensed her presence and took off into the undergrowth. Unfortunately we left shortly afterwards as Marius arrived and not ten minutes later she killed a young Warthog right in front of his vehicle…..bummer, but I guess that’s life, we couldn’t complain we had a wonderful sighting of her.
Having completed our sundowners and continued on, we stumbled across the Sand River Pride, two lioness and five cubs with one of the large males in tow, on the clearings just south of the Inyati Causeway. The timing couldn’t have been better, they were on the move starting out on their evening hunt, and I have always found this to be one of the most spectacular things to be witnessed. We spent a good 45 minutes watching the cubs play and interact with the females, inevitably scaring any potential prey around, but we weren’t complaining, what a sight.
Ending off the evening in style, drinking copious amounts of good South African red wine out under the stars in the Boma, was a very fitting way the end such a great afternoon out in the bush.
Ending this mornings drive, having seen a very large crocodile feeding on a young Wildebeest in one of the waterholes ,and a small group of Elephants along the Sand River, it has truly been an incredible short sojourn out into the bush……..I must do this again soon……………
