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Published: August 20th 2008
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Water Buck
or looarse, where he's been sitting on the toilet too long Off on Safari
We once again braved the hotel breakfast (no sushi on a Sunday though) and then packed up ready to be collected by our courier and taken to the airport. A very chatty lady acted as our chauffeur and she gave us a running commentary on Johannesburg for the whole of the 45 minute drive and managed to keep her eyes on the road for at least half of that.
After a short wait we were soon on board our plane to Nelspruit (not being plane spotters we have no idea what kind of plane it was but it had 1 seat on one side of the aisle and two on the other and only 10 rows). The kids were delighted at getting to go on such a small plane and Jack was fascinated to see that he couldn’t see the propellers once they were at top speed.
An hour later we arrived at Nelspruit airport with its thatched roofed terminal building and were met by our courier who would be taking us to the Kwa Madwala Game Reserve. We left the airport and then turned around and went back again to get the two people
Rhino
Blind as a bat he’d forgotten. Once we were on our way again we passed through some stunning scenery (despite the sky being grey); orange tree groves, sugar cane fields and papaya farms were interspersed with square box townships and bizarrely a Wimpy (the burger kind not the house kind), Spar and Makro.
Once we had turned off the main road (which would have led us to Mozambique had we stayed on it) we were surrounded by park land and indeed soon spotted a giraffe and a bushbuck (antelope-thing). Where we were headed was a private game reserve called the Kwa Madwala Game Reserve which houses a camp called Manyatta Rock Camp. Soon we were let through a security gate by a warden and headed up a dirt track to the camp. On the way we spotted a few impala (more antelope-type things). On arrival in the car park we transferred to an open top Hilux truck which had been modified to house three sets of three tiered seats and were obviously the game viewing vehicles. After being welcomed at Reception we were shown to our room which looks remarkably like one of the large rocks in the camp but can be distinguished
Warthog
or waterhog as Jack kept calling them as a room by the door and windows.
We had a quick look around, read the blurb in the room and headed straight back to reception to book a one-hour elephant back safari for the next day. This safari was a reward for Jack as he had successfully spent 15 of the previous 17 days not having a strop which he had spent a fair amount of the first few weeks of the holiday doing.
After the kids had mistakenly headed off into the kitchen thereby confusing some poor member of staff we were given a quick guided tour of the camp by one of the rangers. What we thought was a viewing platform over the reserve was in fact some toilets with a glass wall. Who needs a magazine when you can be sitting spotting wildlife. The pool looked and felt freezing cold so we think that we’ll give that a miss over the next few days. Which brings us to the weather... we’d been promised warm days (mid-20’s) and cooler evenings but instead we were experiencing cold days and colder nights. We hadn’t really packed for it to be this cold so we were going to
Two lions...
he's trying to have a go but she's having none of it! have to start layering.
Having dressed in our warmest clothes we assembled at 4pm for our first 3-hour safari. The four of us piled into the first two rows of the safari vehicle and another chap (dressed in bright blue - he’ll blend in then!) got into the back row and having adjusted the provided blankets over our legs we set off.
Our first animal we spotted was the Waterbuck or Looarse as we nicknamed it. This (yet another) antelope-type animal had a white imprint of a toilet seat on its bottom. We disturbed a warthog sleeping in a drainage culvert by revving the engine at him. We then headed off rapidly in the truck with Victor our driver exchanging information with the other two vehicles out to find three white rhinoceroses (there are six on the whole reserve); two female and one male. Having photographed these for a while we then drove past a water hole where we found a crocodile sleeping on the bank. Jack was delighted as he had now seen two of three animals he most wanted to see. We drove into and along a dried up river bank, the truck followed the snaking path of a previous truck without Victor (our driver) having to touch the steering wheel. This safari is also proving to be an excellent 4-wheel drive experience. As it was starting to get dark we drove off to a nearby water hole where the other 2 trucks had gathered and our rangers proceeded to lay a table with a cloth and display an array of drink choices along with some butternut squash tarts and a South African version of peperami.
Hiding at the edge of the water hole under an overhanging tree were some hippos, all we could see were their noses and eyes but we could hear them making the odd noise.
The rest of the safari was taken up with trying to catch site of the 2 lions (a male and a female) which we eventually did. This was a fantastic experience because even though it was dark the lions seemed quite happy to sit still in the light shining on them from 3 trucks’ headlights. The male was also trying to show off his prowess for us by trying to mate with the female but she was having none of it despite him biting her neck and ears to try and persuade her!
Having spent a fair bit of time searching for and then watching the lions we quickly (each driver was trying to beat the other drivers back by going different routes, we eventually got second place) made our way back to camp as we were 30 minutes late for dinner.
Both kids were so exhausted that all we could force down Jack was a banana sarnie and Ellie managed some of the soup. Then it was straight to bed to be ready for our 5.30am wake up call for the next day’s morning safari.
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Freedmans
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Jet-lag advantage
It sounds like a good thing you're holding onto the jetlag for all these late night/early morning adventures! WOW! It all sounds like quite an epic animal fest. We've been seeing weird Australian animals but no late night romps. :-) Hope everyone is getting healthy.