Advertisement
Published: October 14th 2023
Edit Blog Post
Our last morning in Manyoni. It was another of those game drives where, as time goes by, you resign yourself to not seeing anything very exciting. Nonetheless it was warmer and the early morning light made for beautiful views. Suddenly Graeme’s radio crackled into life. A lion had been sighted. We turned round and set off in pursuit. When we got there, another jeep was just pulling away. We drove into the bush to get as close as possible, but the lion was still mostly obscured by grass even though he was less than 10 feet away. He was not about to get up, as he had killed a warthog and was noisily consuming it. As it’s a smaller creature, he was crunching straight through the bones. What looked like a rack of raw pork spare ribs was just visible, with blood all over the grass and the lion's face, as we watched and listened in slightly horrified fascination.
Game drive over, we enjoyed a last breakfast then packed up and set off to our next destination, Makakatana Bay Lodge in the massive iSiminangaliso wetland park. It’s the second largest national park in South Africa, behind the Kruger. The drive
took a mere 2 hours, a pleasant change from many previous days. As we entered the park we were surprised to see huge plantations of eucalyptus trees on either side of the road, making the park entrance look like the road up to a truly massive country house. But before long the forests stopped, and the landscape switched to low shrub. The road was being remade, so we were sent on a detour, but found the lodge OK. At 4.00pm it as time for the next game drive, which we shared with a South African couple and their two daughters. We rapidly realised that this was more of a nature drive than a game drive. The reserve is mostly wetland, so you have to stick to the relatively few roads and tracks to avoid getting bogged down. The trees are gradually being cut down and not replaced. Unfortunately, there is an invasive species of shrub know as the curry plant, on account of the smell it gives off when you crush its flowers, which stops almost anything else growing. Controlled burning is therefore being carried out to get rid of the curry bushes and encourage more varied and indigenous vegetation.
Lions cannot be introduced to the reserve until all forestry activity has ended, as they would be too great a risk to the forestry staff. We did not see anything new apart from birds, but Connor, our guide was very good at stopping and explaining things to us. Odd as it may seem, the highlight of the drive was watching a male dung beetle pushing his ball of dung along the ground, with the female perched on top of the ball doing nothing except, presumably, giving instructions! We stopped for a drink as the light was dying, watched from a safe distance by a group of inquisitive giraffes.
Scroll down for more photos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0455s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb