eMpandeni

We were awake at 4:30am. We were heading back to Marloth Park today but we had plenty of time to kill as we couldn’t check in until 2pm so we thought we’d do a game drive down towards Crocodile Bridge first thing and then come back and pack up.
The gates were already open at 5:30am when we left and all the cars had gone, they had been released early.
We turned left poodling along at just 25km an hour as the sun started to rise and gradually we could see further into the bush.
We spotted the odd Impala and Wilderbeast and then Ellie spotted something wriggling across the road. I stopped next to it and it looked like a giant slow worm about 18 inches long. It had no eyes so we couldn’t tell front from back except the direction it was moving. It was a black,grey, green colour and reminded me from something from the X Files. It really was disgusting looking.
Just after the slow worm we came to a huge watering hole full of hippos and their babies. We sat here for a good 20 minute’s watching the babies playing with their mums. It was mad to see hippos actually running around and diving and jumping into the water when all we normally see is them standing still in rivers. If we hadn’t seen it we wouldn’t have believed it.
We span “little simba” around and headed back. Still not seeing much, no big herds or big cats. Once we got to lower Sabie camp I drove straight past following the river road over the 2 pieces of missing road we had passed yesterday. I really wanted to see another leopard, preferably in a tree but I would have just settled for seeing one out in the open.
Unfortunately the game viewing was pretty much the same in this direction and after 30 minutes we turned around and headed back to camp.
It was 9am when we got back and after a quick cup of tea we packed everything up for the last time and loaded the camper. At 10am we left Lower Sabie Camp and headed for crocodile bridge.
It was a 40km drive to Crocodile Bridge and it was sparse if all wildlife until the last 3km when we came across huge herds of Wilderbeast and Zebra and Imapala with Warthog dotted in between. It was like all of the days animals had congregated together to see us off. Then at the last bridge at 1km to go we saw a female lion lying just above the riverbank. I tried to go down a dirt track to get a better look but from that angle all we could see was the tree she was under. It didn’t matter, we had seen lions and had some good photos and she was here to see us off. From the bridge a kilometre down we passed over crocodile bridge over the cattle grids and out of the Kruger. It felt very strange trying to do 80-100kph when our maximum speed had been 50kph for the last 10 days.
We arrived back at Marloth Park at midday and after stopping at the new spar that had just opened for water and milk we headed to the tin shack Mozambique restaurant for lunch to kill the 2 hours we had to wait. Fortunately they had good internet here so we caught up on our emails and social media over the past 48hrs.
At 2pm we collected our keys from the field security office and headed for our new home for the next 7 nights. 3111 Berghaan and when we arrived it was a beautiful place.
The owners had already put food and hay out for the animals and when we opened the back curtains there were Warthog, Impala, Kudu, and crested Guinea fowl eating and laying in the hay having a lovely time.
The house itself is amazing. Made of brick and thatch with pan tiles over the thatch so inside it still feels like a bush house. It has a large open plan kitchen/diner/lounge area that runs straight through the centre of the house and you can see the front door from the back. In America it would be called a shotgun house because you can see all the way through.
Off to the right is a master bedroom with large en-suite and off to the left is a second double bedroom with a separate toilet and seperate shower room. Upstairs there are 4 single beds. It also has air con and solar so most important things will work during load shedding.
For the rest of the afternoon we sat in the garden watching the animals, it is great to see the different dynamics and at one point we had 15 zebra and their foals in the garden.
Around 6:30pm we started a Braai, it was a bit late really and Ellie messed it up by putting the wood on top of the coals so it didn’t really get hot enough and the wood wouldn’t stay alight. Once we thought the coals were hot enough we cooked steaks in the pie iron and Braai tools on the griddle. While the coals were getting hot we also put Banana in the dish for the bush babies and while we sat down to eat dinner a lesser bushbaby came down to get banana right in front of us.
The light from the house is pretty good here so I went inside and got my camera. A handheld shot would never catch the bushbaby so I set the tripod up, manually focused on a tree he had been on and used the wired trigger in my hand so I didn’t have to move.
Then the bushbaby came back, I sat excited incase he jumped on the branch and then he did. I fired the camera and then checked. I got him. My first real picture of a bushbaby on a proper camera.
I kept shooting every time he landed on the branch until eventually the camera battery died and at 8:30pm we put the air con on and went to bed.Leer más