The problem with me blogging every day is that on the morning drive I get the critique of the previous evenings blog for the first few minutes of a game drive. It usually goes along the lines of ‘You made a spelling or grammar error at that point” or “Why didn’t you include this incident or thing?” or “I really didn’t deserve last place on the blog, you forgot I did x, y or z”. This morning it was O asking why I never mentioned that we were charged by a buffalo yesterday. Yes, I did mean to (but got distracted by the loadshedding), and yes it is the only time I recall ever being charged by a buffalo in the Kruger Park and I have been coming for over 50 years now and probably have been here over 100 times now. And no, (before everyone starts panicking), we were not ever in any danger. I do think he was just a grumpy old buffalo (what they call “dagga boys” – a solitary old male buffalo). But it was a Kruger Park first for me though.
This morning we did the other very good road around here and that is to a place called Red Rocks. The road runs south west along the river the whole way and then you cross the river and run back up north east back to the main road and back to Shingwedzi. There was again plenty of game to be seen – waterbuck, impala, zebra, giraffe, wildebeest are all plentiful. But most importantly, we also saw a pride of lion lying in the sandy river bed. We counted at least 6 but there may have been more as our vision of the whole river was obscured. I was starting to feel the predators had gone missing but at least now we have seen 3 separate sets of lion (though leopard and cheetah are awol at this point).
It has been ridiculously hot the last few days. By the time we got back to the camp today (at 9am) it was already 32 degrees C and when we went out for our evening drive it the temperature rose to 40 degrees C at one point. After we got back from the morning drive, everyone except me went for a swim in the pool and then we just spent the rest of the day in our air-conditioned bedrooms and only ventured out for necessities (like lunch). I did see some movement in the tree at one point and realised when I focused my binoculars on it that was a snake hanging down from the tree. That has caused some minor consternation.
The evening drive did not yield much though earlier in the day people had seen both cheetah and lion on the road we drove. They had unfortunately vacated that area when we came through. While we did get M today to 499 lifers on his bird list, it hasn’t been a particularly productive birding the last few days. While we were considerably ahead of last year by Day 2 and 3, we are now a full day and 14 birds behind what we had seen last year at this point (167 is my list versus 181 last year). Hopefully when we go further north we will get some more diversity of birds. That being said, O & H both have 11 lifers so far for the trip.
Dinner was a braai of steak and then H did a pasta side and beans and mushroom sauce. She was cursing she had agreed to do the pasta as she was doing it as she was extremely hot. At one point she had to leave the kitchen to cool off in the bedroom as she couldn’t take the heat anymore. How does that saying go … 🙂
Fortunately the camp has a generator and while it seems they took 30 minutes to get it going the first time, now they seem more prepared and get it going within a minute or so. The only issue is that every time the electricity goes off, our air-con goes off and we have to manually re-start it. We are grateful though that we have aircon at least!
Until tomorrow …
P, H (for cooking), M (for braaiing), I (she finally warmed up again to drive on grandpa’s lap) and O
