Sorry for the delay but no internet access last couple of weeks so this is a slightly longer version of the blog. As you will see later however this could also be called:
· We want a new vehicle
· Snakes
· Mud
· Cute Babies
For the last two weeks we have moved onto Mkhuze National Park.
As you can see from the title we have decided to stop calling the blog linked into consecutive weeks as it will start to tell us we are nearing the end of our trip so psychologically this is much better for us!
An eventful last couple of days at Thanda with some fun with Lions and the office base camp (not ours) being trashed by a big male elephant who got in through the left open gate!
Can we have a new vehicle?
The trip to Mkuze was only approximately 30 km’s but only 10 mins in we managed to have a puncture, so a great start – as always we helped by watching Liam our new guide do all the work. This later became a bit of a theme to the first week as only a couple of days later we also had a slow puncture on one of the other tyres so spent most of the time pumping both up before starting the day off. You don’t bother out here with fixing tyres just coping – not fun though when we went into Phinda game reserve (who have lions) at night to try and find an injured Hyena and just after entering the gate the tyre starts to deflate, so we had to join with one of the guides there to show us around. Nearly 4 hours round trip and all we saw was an egg eating snake (see theme later).
To make things worst on one of our long mornings 4.45- 1.00 both the tyres had deflated and we had to wait at the hunting lodge in the south of the park for someone to turn up with a compressor. This was then all capped off on Tuesday when the front wheel went all wobbly with some funny noises. We had to abandon it completely this time and were rescued with all of us piling into the back of a pick up truck sitting on spare tyres for a very bumpy 30 min trip home! The experiences of Africa. Two days later the vehicle was still there although the roof had now been played with by a large elephant with the roof of the driving position being squashed and a broken windscreen.
By the way the railway sleeper covered in a little bit of foam and a plastic sheet is our seat for the two weeks!
Mkhuze
Another shopping experience at the local town down the road (Spar) but this time we made sure enough chocolate was purchased to last the full two weeks! Dawn however was slightly disappointed when she noticed that Ernst (Biology teacher on a 3 month sabbatical from the east part of Switzerland) our new volunteer joining us, had more bars then we did put together! Ernst also enjoys experiments and is more keen than us to ‘play’ with insects and try out experiments – e.g. some beetles have a spring mechanism in their shells that allows them to turn upright if they land on their backs – we have to keeping picking up beetles, put them on their back and see if it works! (and rescuing those that don’t have the mechanism before something else eats them.
The new camp is excellent out in the bush with no fences just two thatched roofed roundhouses being the local style, one with two bedrooms separated by a small passageway for the meat freezer and the other being the kitchen 1 toilet and 1 shower/washroom (in separate rooms obviously). Liam and his girlfriend live in a small corrugated building just behind us. So 5 people sharing 1 toilet and 1 shower is interesting. However the water is gas heated and the shower is brilliant.
The Impala love sleeping in camp as they feel very safe but this presents its own challenge, the reason for this is that predators do occasionally like Impala for tea. Apparently only a few weeks ago a Leopard killed one 100 metres away. On a couple of evenings we were also joined by Elephant and Hyenas, with Rhino tracks also seen only a few metres away. All good fun.
Snakes
We had the initial chat in camp about animals in our space etc and then the infamous word ‘SNAKE’ was mentioned – unfortunately Liam’s girlfriend Mel loves them as well as Spiders, so guess what we have to keep looking out for! Only a few hours later we came across a nice black looking one called a Mozambique Spitting Cobra (spits very poisonous venom into your eyes very accurately for up to 2 metres). Following night we came across the infamous Puff Adder which injures and kills more people in Africa than any other mainly due to its large numbers rather than its specific deadly poison. (see below – by the way Liam used our camera to take this shot) - ‘ I’m not a celebrity but please get me out of here anyway’ springs to mind.
We also managed a walk to find the dogs more closely and met up with a couple of the APU (Anti Poaching Unit) as the area we were going to has in the past had issues with poachers and more specifically when walking with tourists we need men with guns!
Some our best fun this week was though pulling around the old Wildebeest kill from the Cheetahs and setting up cameras to take close up shots of the vultures feeding and trying to identify them as some are very rare and tags need to be checked.
For the more gruesome among you we also briefly met Marcus from Spain studying a doctorate on carnivorous behaviour. He passed us in his vehicle with a dead Impala on the back which he was due to set up camera traps on, to see what animals come along and review any specialist behaviour. We passed this later in the day with not a lot left and numerous well fed vultures which was great for us as we could count them for our work!
Cute baby and mud week
We were very lucky with popping over to the viewing hide around the corner to camp which was an amazing experience as it is built over a waterhole and the animals come right up to you. Yes the picture of the Rhino rubbing the mud off his horn on a piece of wood is taken through a broken floorboard below us! – It was fantastic and we stayed for 5 hours and you will all be pleased to know we took nearly 1000 photos!
The first shot inparticular reminded us that we must remember to book ourselves in for a Spa treatment on our return – mud wrap anyone!
2 Tips of the week for you this time
Never underestimate the volume of Tonic in the fridge! – Gin and Sprite is just not the same.
For our lady readers – Dawn has discovered the limitations of Clinques’ Eye cream - it does not work under these extreme conditions!
Thanks to all who added comments to the blog, much appreciated and we think for this week’s caption competition some of the above pictures could get those brain cells working.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Love
David and Dawn
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