Our Last Lazy Day in Marloth Park

I was awake at 4am tossing and turning in bed. At 5:30am I was just laying there wanting to get up but not wanting to wake Ellie. At 6am I looked over and Ellie was laying there with her eyes open. “Did you sleep much? “ she said “ Not really” I replied getting up and putting my slobby clothes on.
Ellie got up, disarmed the alarm and opened the front and back doors and we had 7 zebra. I through out the half bucket I had and then made coffees and we drank them watching the zebra and warthog eat the hay and nuggets. It was raining first thing and we had 2 severe weather warnings on our apps. One for severe thunderstorms between 10am and midnight and the other for prolonged heavy rain until midday tomorrow.
At 7pm the rain stopped and although it was cloudy it was still in the high 20’s with broken sunshine for the rest of the day.
At 10am we popped out to the shop for the last time to get a small pint of milk and then headed back to make scrambled egg Jaffels and have a cup of tea.
I randomly kept throwing the odd cup of pellets out for the animals and they came and went.
At midday we sat down inside and watched the TV for a bit while it clouded over and the temperature really dropped but it didn’t rain and by 2pm the sun tried to come back out. It was at this point in the day we decided to start tidying up and packing our things up.
We had washed our bedding from kitted Campers and when Ellie opened the front door she was greeted by the mongoose Family. At the same time I came out of the bedroom to see 10 mongoose laying down at the back door waiting for us. We didn’t have any eggs left and I apologised to them and then I remembered I did have some biltong left in the fridge and some drywors leftover from our time in the Kruger. Biltong is like Jerky but made completely differently, it’s not dryed like Jerky it’s cured.
I opened the front door and started breaking up the drywors first and they loved it. I couldn’t break it up fast enough and I had quite abit there. Most of them got some but the ones that didn’t, didn’t have to wait long because next I had the Biltong and that was already in small pieces so I just put my hand in grabbed a handful and threw it out. They loved that aswell and got through it far quicker than I expected.
We shut ourselves back in, and as I went back in the bedroom I could see the mongoose in a big huddle sleeping on the ground outside our window. They were well happy.
After packing what we could and sorting the camper we went for our last meal out. Back to the Giraffe pub and grill where we first ate and I had my last Eisbein of the year until our next journey back. We ate early at 4pm and were back by 5:30pm just as the black clouds rolled in and a rainbow appeared, still there was very little rain.
Back at the house one lonely Warthog came up and wagged its tail just standing there looking at me. It reminded me of Ella our dog, just staring, giving me the “quick feed me while nobody is looking” eyes and I obliged with 2 big scoops of pellets. She was a very happy warthog with that and truffled around the ground in the hay eating the pellets and grunting with delight until she was joined by 3 others.
At 6:30pm in the last of the light Ellie put our last banana out for the bushbabies. We’ve been so lucky and feel so privileged to have seen so many bushbabies on this trip and I even had one want to cuddle me.
We’ve learnt a lot about Marloth Park which is what we wanted and we now know we don’t want to come back in any holiday season. The people are still lovely and this place definitely has a uniqueness you won’t find anywherelse and that’s why we love it.
At 8pm while watching TV the Bushbaby came out. We paused the TV watching him knowing it would be our last sighting of a live bushbaby for a very long time. It was sad, but we had done our bit for the wildlife in Marloth Park. Tomorrow we would be leaving and it would be someonelses turn to feed the animals and enjoy the place.Read more