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South Africa Bushbuckridge

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  • South Africa 2025
    1
    Day 25

    Hungry hungry hippos

    April 25 in South Africa ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    Today we took a family trip to see Jessica the ever-so-famous hippo.
    Last year she had a 2 weeks old newborn calf, and wasn't to be bothered, so we socialised with her grown up adopted child Seun instead.
    This time around, her calf being old enough to be left alone a little, she came around with Seun for the snacks.

    Those are free hippos. Both were orphans raised by the people who own this property, but they can come and go as they please, they just seem to believe that they are part of the family.

    They are somewhat less dangerous than wild hippos, but only because they choose to be...    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    Day 24

    Return of the Dark-Menace

    April 24 in South Africa ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    (News from the front)

    Dear reader, if you followed our South African adventure last year, you know that, during our stay at Avron's aunt's estate (Mawusi), we got woken up in the middle of the night by a ruffle in the backyard, only to be faced when we opened the window with the shadow of the most enormous kudu ever: "the Dark Menace".
    At the time, he had munched on the protected young trees in the garden and massacred them.

    When we visited before our Kruger safari this year, we rejoiced at the trees having regained their fullness and health after their ordeal.
    "But everything changed, when the Dark Menace attacked (again)"
    We received this video from the courageous Cathy fending off the invader who had breached the perimeter.
    As you can see, the little tree is almost intact by then.

    But the walls of Mawusi couldn't resist the second wave, and a section collapsed, leading to untold massacres during the following nights. You can see what the trees look like now...

    So now it is once again time to rebuild, and Avron has been hard at work doing just that.

    Mawusi is safe again. But for how long ?!
    😄    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    1123
    Day 17

    Last Kruger day

    April 17 in South Africa ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

    Today was a very slow day, with literal hours without any animal sighting, quite surreal.
    And yet we had a couple of great encounters! So fear not, we have more pics to shove down your throat 😄

    In order of appearance we have:
    - A pregnant hyena who just wanted to chill on the warm road in the chilly morning.
    - An African fish-eagle in a tree.
    - The most random encounter with an African squirrel (they are everywhere but so skittish!)
    - A few adorable baby buffalos with their tiny knobbly horns.
    - A Malachite kingfisher (So tiny, Avron outdid himself with this one)
    - Another African fish-eagle, surveying a water hole, with a heard of hippos sunning themselves in the background.
    - A young lion and lioness engaged in their hours long ritual of 10 seconds of mating / 15 minutes snooze, rinse, repeat...
    That last one was a great way for us to close our Kruger experience, and head home for some celebratory cocktails (mango slushies from Wimpy made better with the addition of Malibu from the camp shop 😄)    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    213
    Day 15

    Driving to Pretoriuskop

    April 15 in South Africa ⋅ ☁️ 23 °C

    Oh what a day!
    We left Lower Sabie, our camp for the past three days and headed to Pretoriuskop, our camp for the next three days.
    A pretty long drive, but the fates were on our side and we had some incredible sightings:
    lions, thunderbirds, a family of rhinos!
    Absolutely incredible.
    And on top of that, a couple of unexpected ones like this chameleon crossing the track, this tortoise munching on the side of the road, and my favorite random: a turtle on a turtle... You can't make that up.

    We have now settled into Pretoriuskop, which doesn't have the stunning view over the river that Lower Sabi had (or the cocktails, apparently), but is gorgeous in its own way, and has a pool built to include the gentle slopes of a rocky outcrop so that it forms one side and most of the bottom of the pool! Genius.    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    Day 12

    Kruger park - To Lower Sabi

    April 12 in South Africa ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    And we are back in the Kruger park!
    We wanted to drive swiftly to our camp in Lower Sabi, but we kept on being stopped by so many animal encounters!
    Including the absolutely terrifying visit of a most cuddly looking hyena, loose in one of the picnic areas, with kids playing around and the hyena sneaking under the tables to scavenge crumbs.
    People just shooed it away every time it got too close, and politely complied before coming back from a different angle... Surreal experience!    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    4
    111
    Day 11

    Hoedspruit

    April 11 in South Africa ⋅ 🌙 23 °C

    Bye bye Cape Town, hello beautiful Hoedspruit.
    Although it is only our second time at Cathy's place, it feels like home away from home.
    And the local wildlife also made us feel very welcome with a couple of kudus in the backyard, and warthog and guinea fowls on the way to the shops...

    Tomorrow is the start of a week in the Kruger park. So expect an avalanche of animal pictures. You have been warned!    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    1
    Day 28

    The three Rondavels

    April 28 in South Africa ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    For our last day in South Africa, we took a day trip to one of the most breathtaking places in the world: the Three Rondavels.
    (Rondavels are the round huts often found in Africa, and as you can see there's three of these mountains shaped like Rondavels).
    And as Angela was free today and had never seen it, she joined us at the last minute which was an unexpected treat.

    To do something different, we started with a different access, from below, near the Blyde river, which was beautiful and took us both to a lovely waterfall in the forest, as well as to the abandoned set of the Australian "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" show.

    We didn't realise that the route that would then take us from the river at the bottom to the viewpoint at the top would have us backtrack and make a ridiculous loop through the plains, up a different canyon, and along the plateau, so we made it just in time to enjoy the low sun on this magnificent view.

    This is one of my very favorite places in the world, it's hard to convey its serene majesty with pictures only...

    A link to a photosphere below:
    https://photos.app.goo.gl/c9MSMBgr6AdD9nv68    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    Day 18

    The wedding

    April 18 in South Africa ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C

    It felt strange not adding a footprint for the wedding that took us back to South Africa in the first place: Avron's cousin Angela and her husband Evgeny.
    We didn't take many pictures, because there was a photographer doing that much better than we do, so we'll probably make a footprint when these pictures are released.
    But the venue, an old tobacco shed in the middle of a grapefruit orchard, by the foot of the local mountain range, was too pretty not to show you.    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    1
    Day 16

    Daytime… nighttime…

    April 16 in South Africa ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We are just back from a night tour, something we have never done before.
    Most of it was very unsuccessful, with very little animals around except for a plethora of owls, grouses and (of all things), chameleons (they actually stand out better at night under the bright torchlight).

    The highlight of this tour was undeniably stumbling onto this bored baby hyena left alone while mummy is hunting, and who thought that the tyres of the vehicle were fascinating.
    In a trip with so many baby animals, this one was unexpected!    Read more

  • South Africa 2025
    1
    Day 14

    Kruger morning walk and afternoon drinks

    April 14 in South Africa ⋅ ☀️ 36 °C

    We woke up at 4.30am for a 4-hour walk in the Kruger with 2 game-rangers and 6 of us tourists. We were driven out into the heart of the bush and on location we watched the game-rangers fully load their rifles with live ammunition. It certainly got the adrenaline going as we ducked and weaved through bushes and spider webs, walking on sandy paths riddled with an assortment of buck hoof prints and other animal tracks. Within minutes we could see giraffes just a few metres away and then a few elephants only 25 metres away. We quietly backed away and gave them a wide berth as we circled around and continued down the hill to a water hole and stopped to take some photos of hippos in the wild.

    We finished off the day at the restaurant overlooking the Sabie river, drinking cocktails of long island iced teas, pina coladas and a Mexican pineapple and ginger ale one that I'm now too tipsy to remember the name of. The animals came down to the river and I wonder if they were as focused on us as we were on them.    Read more

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