Day 7 – Elephant Plains, Sabi Sands
Alas, everything starts about 30 minutes earlier here. So, 5:30am wake up; 6am departure for the morning game drive in our trusty Land Cruiser.
The animal sightings started quickly and just got better
throughout the day. Our first sightings
were the typical antelope animals which are everywhere – impala, water buck, nyala, etc.
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| Toilet seat markings on the butt of male Water Buck |
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| Hyena in front of termite mound |
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| Hard to see - but giraffe head is visible right at the low point of the trees |
We eventually moved on and we noticed that the chatter
really started to pick up on the radio. I like to sit in the front row right behind the guide so I can a) ask a non-stop barrage of questions (I have yet to stump any of them) and b) so I can hear what is going on on the radio. I've mentioned before that one habit all guides share, regardless of which lodge they work with, is that they all speak in English
until (my opinion) they don’t want the guests to know what they are saying and
then all communication switches to Afrikaans. During one of these non-English exchanges, in an instant, Morné’s entire demeanor changed and we started
to move. Quickly.
Normally the drive is very slow and we are
looking for things. This time, we could
tell Morné was trying to get somewhere, and pretty quickly.
Which is difficult given that there are huge “speed bumps” (mounds in the road to force water
drainage) all along the road, so you can’t go too quickly for too long. We eventually got to an area where he slowed
down and he and Life started looking outside of the vehicle, obviously tracking something.
The tracking process is them looking at tracks on the ground and trying
to follow them – I can assure you that to the untrained naked eye, it just
looks like sand with a million tire and animal tracks that all blend together.
We were going back and forth through an area with Morné working
with other vehicles trying to find whatever it was we were looking for – we still had no idea. After about 30 minutes of slow tracking, we finally found it - a small cluster of wild dogs.
So why is this so exciting? Well, there are only about 250 wild dogs left in the entire Kruger/Greater Kruger area, so seeing them is a treat. It is hard enough to find them in general, but if you do find them and then they cross over into a different private reserve, you are basically SOL. We saw one, and then two, and then five, and then seven and they just kept coming. We learned there were about 25 in this pack and they hunt in groups – so we had half the group – about 12-13 wild dogs. In the predator hierarchy, they are 4th after lions, hyenas and leopards – which is impressive given that they are not fairly small... but notoriously vicious in how they coordinate their hunting - basically running down their prey by tag teaming and anticipating where the prey is going to go and then boom. Kill. Again, nature is pretty damn cool.
We followed them around slowly - mostly taking in their colors - they are all the same colors - black, white, brown, yellow - but their markings are all really different - almost like abstract paintings. Then we started seeing hyenas which got Morné pretty excited
because when there are hyenas around, that always makes for a good
scuffle as the two do not like each other. Once the hyenas were in range of the wild dogs, Morné became a mad-man chasing them around – off-roading through thick
growth, across the sandy riverbed, back on the river bank ledge. Trying to maneuver a huge Land Cruiser through brush and deep sand is, well, interesting.
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| Hyena meets wild dog |
At one point, we heard something scream and
we saw one dog emerge from some bushes with blood on its face.
Then things got crazy – we couldn’t see, but could hear some
action. Morné was racing around trying
to get to it with 2 other vehicles nearby doing the same. What we assume happened is that the dogs made
a kill (the scream), then the hyenas came in and stole the kill (as they will),
which pisses off the dogs (which it should), and then the fight for the kill
ensues. We never did see the actual
kill, but when we finally got sight of the animals again, it was like watching a discovery channel episode unfold in front of us.
We were back in the river bed and saw the pack of dogs (maybe 10
or so) had cornered a hyena against the river bank. They hyena would dart out and try to get through
the dogs but couldn’t. Then a second, smaller hyena popped out and we realized
that the bigger hyena was actually protecting its baby that was pinned
up against the river bank. Morné explained
that it was probably going to get brutal as the dogs had the numbers and the tactical advantage. I wasn't sure whether to watch in horror, or video tape, or look away. I opted to watch and record.
Eventually the mother and young hyena made it up the river bank
moderately unscathed and we followed.
There we saw round two of the fight where one of the dogs took a pretty
good bite out of mother hyena's butt.
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| The second scuffle |
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| Bite to the butt |
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| Watching the scuffle |
To understand how rare a viewing like this is – we had a
second guide in our vehicle who was new to this area and he said that in 8
years of doing this, he had never seen a live fight. So we were pretty pumped up. It was no pangolin, but still a pretty
impressive show!
Feeling like we scored big, we were prepared to head back to
camp for a big rewarding breakfast and instead got sidetracked, darn, by another leopard
sighting. This time, it was a giant male
sleeping in a tree with a giant hunk of bloody meet in his paws with a female
lounging on a termite mound below the tree.
We did see a few hyena approach the tree to see if they could score any
of the kill, but they eventually walked off empty handed. Tough day for hyenas!
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| Male leopard in tree, female in grass |
Back at the lodge, we had a quick breakfast and then headed
out for a nature hike. Both lodges offer daily nature hikes, but they canceled them at Motswari due to the wind - again, you don't want to be in a situation where you can't hear an animal approaching and vice versa. This is literally
the first time we’ve been able to walk anywhere off property, so that was
nice. We had two guides – armed with an
elephant rifle and some big-ass bullets and about 8 of us marched quietly in
single file on our nature hike. We were told that at some point, the big 5 had all been spotted on this route, as was confirmed by poop sightings, so we all followed instructions and kept a wary eye.
We
learned about different trees and grasses, which was much more interesting than
you might think. Even trees have the
ability to protect themselves from being eaten using defensive tactics like
growing thorns or releasing tannin. We
each tasted a leaf with a high tannin density (think dry red wine). The tannin immediately dries out your mouth,
which means that animals will not eat it.
Pretty cool! We then had the poop
discussion and the guides picked up, examined and crumbled all sorts of poop as
we played “guess whose poop this is”. I
just realized I shook their hands after our walk. Oh well.
By the time we got back to the lodge at 11am, it was probably in the mid-80’s – so sweating in a t-shirt and shorts.
That is what I mean by huge temperature swings!
Post nature walk, we have a blessed 3 ½ hours before our
next feeding. Otherwise known as NAP
TIME! Damon is still sleeping next to me
as I type. It may seem strange that we get so tired doing nothing but eating & sitting in a truck looking at things, but I can assure you - we are hungry and tired all of the time! Post nap, we had some deck
time and watched wildlife through our binoculars. I took a
particular interest in birds as we have a number of trees right in front of our
deck – the colors on birds here are amazing.
And the noises they make are unique and loud. There is one bird called a "grey go away" bird - that is actually the scientific name for it. Suffice to say it was named for the screechy noise it makes that sounds very much like "go away". We are very lucky this time of year in that
there are no bugs – we haven’t seen a mosquito yet (knock on wood). Since we didn’t take any malaria medication, that
is probably a good thing.
We left on our afternoon drive with a fairly single minded
purpose. I think I mentioned before that
when the guides switch to Afrikaans, it means they are discussing something
interesting. I’ve been trying to pick up
a few animal words so I know what we are headed to and I did have the one for wild dogs at one point, but
forgot it. I now know Lion is “Ngali” (oon-gali) because I heard that word thrown around over the past few days. I started hearing it again on this drive, and it seemed we were headed to the grassy area where we saw the lions yesterday, so I asked Morné if would get to see the cubs today.
As we approached, he
said “take a look” – there were six cubs including a set of 2 that were a
little bit older and bigger and a set of 4 that were only a few months
old. Now baby elephants and baby giraffe
and baby rhinos and baby hyenas are cute. But baby lions
are redonk cute. Most of them were
napping, as lions tend to do – constantly.
But there was one little cub that could not resist annoying the crap out
of his mom by attacking her tail and biting it, repeatedly.
Mom got mad, growled and walked away.
And the cub slowly and nonchalantly made its way back to mom and started
a full on tail attack again. After he
got bored, he meandered over to annoy grandma, but grandma would have no part
of it, and then the cub joined the group of other cubs and basically climbed
all over them with no response until he finally got bored and plopped right in
the middle of the group to nap. Of
course we could have stayed there forever to watch, but after 20 minutes or so,
we had to make room for another vehicle. Get ready to "awwww" your way through the next group of photos. This was in fact narrowed down from about 100 cub pix.
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| The trouble maker |
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| Who can I annoy??? |
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| I can definitely annoy mom |
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| And continue to annoy mom |
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| I got your tail! |
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| Soooo tired |
Baby lions were our main sighting on this outing (totally worth it) but we did spend
some time looking for/at some interesting birds – especially the lilac breasted
roller, which is hands down my favorite bird. Words I never thought I would say.
We stopped for our sun-downer and had a nice break while the sun set. Morné has been a guide for more than 15 years
so we spent about an hour just questioning him with everything we could think
of – the amount of information they know about plants and animals is astounding
– from names, types, mating habits, defensive characteristics, what they eat,
what they poop, tracks, etc. - and they would tell you it is just the tip of
the iceberg of all possible information.
The trackers tend to be much quieter, but their skill sets
are also unbelievable. It seems many of
them grew up in smaller villages and have been around animals/tracking their
whole lives. To give another example of
their skill set – when we were driving back to the lodge at 20-25 kph in the
pitch black with nothing but a roving spotlight, we stopped and Life said
“chameleon”. We all looked where the
spotlight was pointed – a green leafy tree about 6-8’ off the road with a green
chameleon maybe 8-10” in length sitting on a branch. Even with Morné out of the car pointing at
it, we all could barely see it. Life
found it while we were moving with less than a second of light splashing across it. Truly impressive.
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| Find the chameleon. Hint look in brightest part of light. |
I think Morné decided to take a short cut by driving through
a sandy river bed in the pitch black. Or, he was messing with our heads. The sand was deep and
there were no prior vehicle tracks in it for us to follow so it seemed that our Cruiser was struggling. I think even Damon was a little nervous as he
doesn’t seem to have full confidence in the Land Cruiser's ability to not get
stuck in this type of sand. The river
was maybe 2-3 truck widths across and it is pitch black. We are driving
very slowly because of the sand and we have one light scanning the area back
and forth and the animal/bird/insect noises are everywhere. Hyena cries tend to stand out (they sound
like pig calling “sooooo-eeey, sooooooo-eeey”) and they were loud. And close. So of course I’m picturing all of the bush
animals calling out that there is a truckload of easy prey in the river bed and
every time our light moved, they just kept getting closer and closer. Of course we were fine, but there is some
time to let your mind wander in the bush in the dark!
Morné told us that this was his last safari with us since he
and Life started their 2 week vacation the following day (they work 6 weeks on,
2 weeks off) and we would be getting a new guide the following day. We told him that he had set the bar pretty
high and that basically the next guy had some pretty big shoes to fill. Maybe he would get us some zebra and a
pangolin. Ha.
We had another great dinner in the Boma – the food (and
wine) here has been spectacular. And tonight they gave us marshmallows and roasting sticks so we could cook marshmallows in the fire. Another seemingly American tradition since some of our friends had never had roasted marshmallows before and did not know what s'mores were. The horror! We were
back in bed by about 9:30 ready to start another great day.
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