From Berg to bush in March 2015 part one Golden Gate* NP

[Tina]

I had to check the vulture restaurant although the clouds were moving in. Only some swallows were around





the view from the hide

[Tina]

flowers along the way

[Tina]

and the sunset behind the clouds

[Tina]

on the return we saw grey rhebok



While my SO started to braai on the Weber, the thunderstorm started as well. It was pretty cold too, about 10 degrees. But as we were worried about the smell, we did not start the fire in the inside fireplace but we tried to warm up the bathroom with the radiator we found in the bedroom.

[Tina]

12.03.2015

when we woke up at 6:30 there was a very dense fog outside and it was very cold in the chalet. Thus I took the radiator into the bedroom and slept until 9 am. There was still some fog then

[Tina]

Thus we took our time to have breakfast before leaving for a drive only at 11:30 am. By now the sun was out . We saw this flower on the way to the car.

[Tina]

At reception they had told us that the last carcass was put out on February 16th and as we were late and we had not seen anything the day before, we did not plan on visiting the vulture restaurant. But we had to drive by as the Mountain retreat is located off the oribi loop. We saw a bird flying above the parking lot and decided to have a closer look though. It was the second bird from my wish list, the one we were visiting the park for, the bearded vulture

[Tina]

a shy jackal was around as well

[Tina]

we made a comfort stop at Meriting picnic site and proceeded to the Van Reenen family graveyard



the view towards the picnic site



only from here we noticed that there were baboons all over the picnic site

and the view towards Golden Gate Dam



we saw another lifer here, african stonechat. While I was standing quite still, trying to find more birds in the reed, an antelope came around the corner. When it saw me, it turned around that quickly that I could not even see what it was.

[Tina]

at the view point towards the dam, we met more baboons but fortunately they were rather skittish than intrusive



and moved on