South Africa 2011

South Africa 2011

This is a story about our 10 day trip through KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. We rented a car and started in Durban. From there we visit the Abu Madi Game Ranch, Tembe Elephant Park and St. Lucia with its iSimagaliso wetlands.

There are 3 movies at the movie page.
Pictures at our Multiply site.

Friday 13 may

Tom is already in South Africa for over a week when Gonnie takes a British Airways flight to South Africa.
It is Friday the 13th and it looks like people don't dare to fly on this date. During all flights I have empty chairs next to me. On the first flight I am the only sitting in row 13! How courageous. Via London and Johannesburg I arrive in Durban on Saturday morning.

beach at Durban

Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 may

These two days we stay at Hans and Tina's paradise in Westville. It is a weekend filled with relaxing and nice company.
At Sunday morning we have a champagne breakfast to celebrate our anniversary earlier this week. After breakfast we drive to the beach. The weather is good. We have a nice walk along the beach, Hans and Tina go for a short swim and we have a drink on the terrace of the diving club.

Monday 16 may

Today we leave Durban and drive north in the direction of the Zululand Rhino Reserve. This is a relatively new reserve composed of a variety of small private ranches. When we arrive at the gate we are told there is an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in KwaZulu Natal. We have to walk through a disinfective solution and the guard sprays the tires of the car with the same solution. After this and putting our name, license plate and destination in the log we are allowed to drive on to the Abu Madi Game Ranch.
So we drive straight on the lodge. porcupine

To our surprise they are not expecting us. The owners are away for a few days and the lady who is watching the place thought we were coming on tuesday. The entire staff is gone to town to visit the clinic. But despite that we are warmly welcomed in. We are free to pick a room in the lodge. We choose the room closest to the bush. In the kitchen we find equipment to make tea. When we are enjoying the tea on the terrace the lady brings us some cookies.
In the meantime the sun is no longer on its highest point and the temperature starts to go down too. We take the car for a gamedrive in the park. We see impala, warthog, kudu, gnu and 11 giraffes, not bad for a first afternoon.
Sizene starts dinner preparation when shee comes back from the clinic. It is later than usual and the porcupine is already coming for scraps while she is not ready cooking. This means we have lots of time to feed the porcupine before we are going to eat ourselves. A great experience. Sizene made a great mince pie with a salad. For dessert we have ice cream with chocolate sauce.
After dinner the temperature outside is still good and we decide to enjoy a coffee and also our brought wine and beer on the terrace. (Abu Madi has no license to sell liquor, but you can bring it from town.)

Tuesday 17 may

The entire night we heard thunderstorms going over, but when we wake up the sky is blue again. With a cup of tea and a rusk we enjoy the sunrise. More and more birds wake up. We don't only hear them but also see them at the feeding platform and in the tree.
At 8 o'clock Sizene serves a great breakfast. Eggs with bacon, sausage, tomato and ofcourse there is toast, muesli, yoghurt and fruit. After breakfast we get in our car and drive off to discover the entire game ranch.
We take every path we can find. Doing so we encounter zebra, giraffe, impala, gnu, warthog and monkeys. Often we see vultures circle in the sky, but they never go down so there must be nothing for them to eat.
In the heat of the day we go back to the lodge. Just a bit of relaxing and looking at the pictures. At half past three we are going to search for rhino again. We imagine the name Rhino Reserve is not because of the giraffes here. Again we see lots of impala, nyala, gnu and giraffe. But then finally, just before it starts to rain, there are two rhinos. They are walking just on the other side of the border.
When we arrive at the lodge the storm has started. It is pouring, so we have to drink our beer inside. Martha is back on the ranch and comes in to say hello. Again we enjoy a great meal, Sizene made a chicken curry. For dessert we have ice cream with peaches.

The movie on the top left gives an impression of our visit to Abu Madi.

Wednesday 18 may

Again we have a nice and relaxing morning. No gamedrives at dawn but breakfast at 8, pack our bags and say goodbye. elections

Before we move on we make a last tour around Abu Madi. And again we see many giraffes and other small game.
After stopping at the supermarket in Mkuze we drive via Jozini, across the Jozini dam, along the beautiful reservoir in the direction of Tembe. We pass several polling stations. Everything here is going a little bit different. It is unthinkable that a political party is lobbying for votes in front of the polling station on election day. Here we see flags and posters, people in colored
t-shirts, honking cars with flags out of the windows, all trying to get voters.
After 2 hours we reach the Tembe Elephant Park. vervet monkey

At the gate we have to pay admission for the park. The lodge is notified they can pick us up. Soon a jeep comes around the corner. We have to follow the jeep to the parking lot. The guide apologizes for the wrecked suncover, the elephants did not like it. Maybe the car park is not as safe as they suggest?
The open jeep brings us in a few minutes to the lodge. We are greeted by the staff with a welcome song. After paying the rest of our accommodation bill we are brought to tent 9, at the edge of the camp, far from the bar and the restaurant. There is lunch at two, a chicken pie with salad. Next to us there are 10 other guests, amongst them a group of 6 dutch people.
For the gamedrive at 3 we are directed to the dutch jeep. It is a pitty that the others are one large group.Before the sundowner we don't see anything special. But in the dark we see a rhino and 4 lions.
Back in camp they serve a great dinner. After that we enjoy a drink around the campfire. When we arrive at our tent we discover to our surprise the electric blanket is turned on to warm up the beds. We think it is a bit too much, as the temperature is still 15 degrees Celsius. And we decide to have a coffee on the veranda to allow the beds to cool down.

Thursday 19 may

The alarm wakes us at 5:15. We get dressed and walk through the camp to breakfast. There are some fresh elephant tracks on the path to our tent. The elephant must have been very quiet we didn't hear anything and missed a great experience.
They serve a light breakfast with coffee and tea. At six we drove away in the open jeep to find the animals. We are searching for elephants for 4 hours when Vusi asks us if we want to go to hide once more, or back to the camp. The other guests are leaving the park this morning and just want to see 1 elephant so we choose the hide. And there it is, our first Tembe elephant, next to the waterhole.
Back at the camp they have a hot breakfast ready for us. Fried eggplant, bacon and eggs, a good combination. Lisa asks us if we want to come to the hide at 12. She arranged with their guide Patrick to bring us. The trip is a huge success. Two elephants are pushing and playing and they are spraying with water and mud. The 90 minutes until Patrick is coming to pick us up are flying by. On our way back to camp we encounter a huge elephant, who is stopping about 1 meter from car, eating a branch.
We arrive in camp just in time for the 2 o'clock lunch. We are glad we chose the salad, the burgers seem very big.
Vusi is not very optimistic about our changes to see animals on the drive, because of the strong wind. He even calls it a bushdrive instead of a gamedrive. Not everybody is catching on quickly and he has to explain that on a bush drive you see mainly bushes. It turns out he is right. We do see elephant, rhino and buffalo, but all behind the bushes.

Friday 20 may

During the morning gamedrive we spot a herd of elephants and some rhinos at a waterhole. It makes a great picture. Ofcourse we also spot many nyalas and impalas and, far away, behind the reed, there is a herd of buffalo. When are back in camp we ask Vusi to bring us to the waterhole at 12. There are lots of elephants at the waterhole and there is much interaction between them. campfire

We get text messages from people at home who are watching with us through the webcam. Time flies and before we know it, it is half past one and Vusi comes back to pick us up. There are only four guests for lunch, Maree and Donald from Scotland and us. But it doesn't take long before other guests arrive. It is weekend so some large groups are visiting the park.
There are eight people in the jeep for the afternoon drive. We tell Vusi we have seen enough elephants and want to go for anything big but 'no elephants'. Either Vusi or the animals didn't understand and we see more elephants tan we have seen in Tembe before this gamedrive. Behind the marsh we encounter a large herd which is growing by the minute, they come from every direction to join the herd. Not every animal is greeted kindly. It is great to see how it works. The small boys showing they are 'protecting' the rest by trying to chase bigger females away.
Back in camp we see what a weekend is like here. A large group of friends arrived and a family reunion. All of them very noisy. After dinner Tom, the manager, is telling Tembe stories. In our eyes the stories are a bit childish but he captures the crowd with anecdotes about monkeys, crocodiles and lizards.

Saturday 21 may

The first jeep leaving the camp at 6 is ours. The Scottish guests are afraid they might miss lion

their flight back home if the drive is extended because of a great sighting. So there are only 4 guests in our jeep. The others are two English doctors, working in a hospital in the neighborhood for a short period. It is their first safari ever and boy are they lucky, the first animal we encounter is a lion, walking out of the bushes just in front of our jeep. She is followed by her sister and not much later but a male lion. We follow them until they go off in the bushes again. Just as Vusi tells us that there used to be a third female with this group, the mother of the females, she comes up the road. What a great start of the day.
We forgot instantly that it is cold and misty. Not much later we drive up to a herd of buffalo on the airstrip. With the usual impala, nyala, gnu and giraffe it is a good last drive here in Tembe. After breakfast we pack our bags and Vusi brings us to our car, while the rest of the staff is singing a song as a farewell. The road to St. Lucia is good. The asphalt on the R22 to Hluhluwe is smooth, without potholes. We are earlier at the Lalapanzi Guesthouse than expected. Chameleon

So we have a huge portion of the afternoon left and we decide to go for a walk. We start at the beach and take the boardwalk back to the village. It is a beautiful walk, but it is much further than we thought, it took us over two hours.
We have an early dinner at Quarterdecks. The pasta bolognaise is not longer on the menu. After last year, when Marko tried this pasta with meatloaf dish which had no sauce at all, we are not surprised. We were going for fish anyway.
At 8 Kian Barker of Shaka Barker picks us up at the lodge for a nightdrive in the iSimangaliso park. It is certainly off season, we are the only guests and there are no other cars in the park. Kian gets us three chameleons from the tree and shows them in the car, so we can see the small animals up close. We also see many antelopes and even a rhino. But great sightings are the nocturnal birds like the dikkop and the nightjar.

Sunday 22 may

We both wake up feeling terrible. Before breakfast we have thrown up and we are also having diarrhea. So just a piece of toast and cup of tea, and that is it for breakfast. We have tickets for the Hippo &Croc tour at 10 o'clock and we decide to go for it.
The cruise is great, but as I am still feeling sick I am lying on the seats a lot. We pass groups of hippo, a huge crocodile on the bank of the river, and several water birds.
The captain is steering the boat close to the crocodile, hoping that the crocodile will move into the water. And just as we are taking pictures very close up, it turns his head and with a huge splash it is swimming away. The mud sprays in our faces but we can wipe that away, the memory will stay.
Back on land I finally throw up my breakfast and feel a lot better. But we go back to our room to have a few hours rest anyway. At the end of the afternoon we take a walk in a wooded area to see if we can find the purple crested lourie. They are high up between the green leaves, but we do see three of them.
The boardwalk is really close, so we take walk there too. A group of hippos is lying close to the boardwalk on the riverbanks. Nice picture. At the end of the boardwalk, at the beach we notice there is much more wind than yesterday, the sand is grinding our legs. And it doesn't take long for us to go back to the village. We bought a sandwich at the Spar supermarket and make cup-a soup to go with it. Then we go to bed early hoping we feel better in the morning.

Monday 23 may

A good night rest and we do feel much better, it was just a short breakdown. After breakfast we drive to the iSimangaliso Wetland park. Today we have the entire day to see what the park has to offer. We take every loop road there is and stop at every point of interest. We do see a lot.
Next to all the different birds, from cougal to mousebird, we see animals like waterbuck and kudu. The nicest kudu is sitting next to the road. It has huge horns. After a while he stands up and crosses the road to disappear in the bushes.
mangoest

At Cape Vidal we see monkeys at the campground but also a troup of mongoose drinking at the water place.
Not much later we see two buffalo, what a great day. There is much work being done in the park to improve the visitor facilities. There already is a new hide at the Mafazana Pan, very nice because of the different height levels. At Catalina Bay there is a new deck, on which you can eat your picnic lunch and enjoy the beautiful view.
Dinner at Braza. A huge screwer with meat. Walking back to the guesthouse we are stopped by a car. They saw a hippo walking in town and urge us to be careful. As we are curious we go back to the guesthouse to pick up our car drive around the village to find the hippo. We do see him in a small park, a few blocks away. Very impressive animal out of the water.
Back in our room we get connected to the internet to check in for our flights tomorrow. This way we can be sure to have two seats together, as we booked separately. That is a lot nicer on a long flight.

Tuesday 24 may

After breakfast we go to the liquor store to buy a bottle of OBS as a souvenir. nijlpaard

For ourselves we wanted a salad set and we find a nice one in the handicraft market. As we are ready very soon we have much time before our flight and we decide to have a last drive through the wetland park.
Soon after the gate we see a herd of buffalo. At the Amazibu pan a hippo with young is walking on the banks. Very nice. But today the wind is stronger than yesterday and the rest of the animals are hiding for it. On top of that there are much more visitors.
At 12 we leave St. Lucia and drive back to Durban airport. After 1151 km we turn in our rental car at Budget. We get only one boarding card but they do label our bags through to Amsterdam. At Johannesburg we get the other two boarding passes. The long flight to London is just half filled and we can have three seats for ourselves. So we are not sitting next to each other but we are lying down, sleeping behind each other in our own row.