Week 10, 11 & 12 – Elephants and ‘Bush Goggles’

---

No, we haven’t been gored, eaten or otherwise destroyed (although Alex and Chris tried the best last Friday night but more of that later). It’s just been sunny, busy and generally hectic. We had a great week with the breeding herd of elephants who charged us twice, once on Monday when we returned from canoeing to find them coming down to drink. Chris bumbled into the matriarch while heading for the little boys bush. Cue mayhem, trumpeting and very scared looking Chris leaping into the Land Rover. Friday night our braii was rudely interrupted by them trumpeting and running past again clearly upset that we were using their water point for fishing and cooking meat.

We also got our first taste of African bureaucracy while trying to extend our visa this involved visiting the Home Affairs office only to be told we could only have a month and then had to get out of the country. A visit to Port Elizabeth who usually give 3 month extensions ended after 4 hours of queuing during which 2 people were served. So back to Grahamstown and the same person decided to give us a 2 month extension. My advice to anyone trying to extend a visa in South Africa is persevere and don’t accept the first answer, having a decent sob story about wanting to spend Xmas in the sun also helps.

Sandra and I got a bit of bush burnout and had to get out of the reserve so we headed to Kenton on Sea for a bit of beach and fishing. The town is pretty small but the beaches are great. Fishing wasn’t so good though and once again I lost more tackle than I caught fish. Returning reinvigorated we walked back into ‘me-time’ which is when we each get to choose a place on the reserve and spend 12 hours there on our own listening learning and avoiding any dangerous animals. I choose a nice spot by the river, a large pool with overhanging rocks to retreat up if any dangerous animals came down. The day started off well with fresh elephant dung but sadly no big game. Instead I was plagued by cobras and walked into 3 in the space of an hour, luckily I saw two before they saw me. The third was a bit of surprise to both of us and I got the full rear up and hiss treatment, I backed off pretty quick and we went our separate ways. Further down the river Sandra had picked a quiet spot which turned out to he the destination for every Rhino and Buffalo on the reserve that day, she walked in 4 of them 25m from her sanctuary and spent a nervous half hour watching them thinking ‘isn’t the safe distance from rhino 100m on foot?’

Today was an awesome day as we are learning about arthropods I got to go out looking for scorpions, managed to find four fairly venomous ones under logs around the camp. Sandra got spiders but wansn’t as active in finding them for some reason. Chris managed to capture the gem a palm sized sun spider, basically a killing machine. We paired it up with a locust which it quickly destroyed and then tried to home it with a centipede, there followed a cinematic battle with stingers vs. jaws. The fight was only interrupted when both were unceremoniously dumped into ethanol. But not before being dropped, cue lots of people screaming and jumping about while trying to look serious about catching them again.

As I know some readers may be Chris fans. Highlights from Chris life on the reserve so far have been, in no particular order:
1 - His love affair with the Reed Valley girls - especially the masseurs.
2 - Hard drinking at Sand flats pub a mere 70km drive away in Patterson and our local. This night out ended with Chris and Alex walking back from the main gate to the lodge at 3.00am with only a mobile phone light to guide their way. This was particularly brave given that it’s a 2km walk with cheetah, elephants, rhino and buffalo all around. We tracked their spoor the next day which showed they took a zig zag path.
3 - Learning to reverse while being charged by an angry elephant.
4 - The Land Rover being hunted at night while driving in with the lions.
5 - The onset of ‘bush eyes’ which impaired his judgement at the pub last week - not sure what her name was.
6 - Losing lighters, pens, notes, pads.
7 - Screaming like a little girl today when a large sun spider we were looking at escaped.

---

Comments

[anonymous]

HILARIOUS!!! More stories please!!! He's the most lovely person on Earth but, still, bless him, hapless.... there's a bestseller in there somewhere! -Chris Fan