11th July Talamati to Lower Sabie continued
Around 2km outside Tshokwane we found a car next to the road and then I spotted movement in the bush next to the road “Wild dog!!”
There were 4 or 5 that we could see but only one was moving around and causing major frustration as we were battling to line him up through the bush for a pic.
I suddenly got in a flap because I realized that these guys were going to be around for awhile and that Heksie was on her way down, but there was no cell signal, so I sent the message with the hope that it would go through as soon as we found signal.
The Cow and I then had another camera scrap as she was better positioned to take a pic, but my camera confuses her, so she insults it, which gets me excited “Look through the view finder, you are catching the mirror, focus on the eyes!!”. The camera normally gets thrown back at me and today was no exception.
Suddenly I heard a groaning from the back seat and then some frantic window winding from Hawkeyes as she vomited again, although aimed a little better this time, so only a small amount entered the car, but my nose was twitching instantly and others were looking at us, so we decided to move on for some rapid fresh air.
The rest of the drive down to the H12 Bridge produced a few of the normal gang and then a hyena cruising down the road in the middle of the day.
We checked out things on the bridge and then decided to duck down the S30 towards Lower Sabie as the Cow and Hawkeyes seemed a little better; therefore a Skukuza visit wasn’t required.
A few km down the S30 we found 2 cars next to the road, although they were the sour antisocial type and wouldn’t volunteer information, but we eventually found what they were looking at. It’s the first Nyala that we have ever seen on the S30.
A few km later a massive road block appeared, but fortunately it was next to a loop in the road, so we ducked around the loop and exited in front of the traffic jam and then reversed to ask the nearest car what was happening.
It turns out that a leopard had killed an impala deep in the bush, and then a hyena pulled in and stole it. The leopard wasn’t visible, however you could vaguely see the hyena, so I slowly moved on, but we hadn’t gone 30m past the crowd when the Cow shrieked “leopard!” and there he was standing in the open and the entire gang wasn’t aware of his presence, because they had hyena sighting fever.
The darn leopard then decided to duck down in the grass, so we lost sight of him, but we decided to sit it out and see if he popped up again.
The crowd continued to grow around the hyena area and we could hear that things were starting to get nasty as some aunty at the back started to scream “Move so I can see!!” and a few minutes later there were tyres spinning followed by a few “@#$#@%” and then a few rebuttal “@#%$#%”, so it was getting unpleasant.
The leopard seemed to also have an issue with the commotion and popped his head up.
I’m not sure what the rest of the gang was looking at, because the hyena was so deep in the bush that you could only see the odd spot and from where the majority of the crowd was parked you could never see the leopard, so frustrations seemed to grow amongst gang, which resulted in the leopard popping his pip up again and then he moved off, so we decided to leave the gang to their hyena and continued on.
The rest of the drive to Lower Sabie was quiet and our only other major sighting was Vinkie and AP on the H10 Bridge just outside camp.
We booked in to our EH5 hut and I quickly organized the best braai I could find and stashed it in front of our unit.
Hawkeyes and the Cow went to lie down, BP and Albert made mates with the neighbour’s rats and I sat outside with a dop.
A few greedy green pigeons pulled in while I was relaxing, so I took a few pics to get my points up with the Cow.
It had been a long day in the car and we had Heksie, WendyA and Heksie’s mom pulling in for a braai later, so we decided to do a short drive up the H4-1 and only stopped to takes pics of an ellie/buff combo and then a large herd of buffalo
The weather looked rather suspect when we arrived back in camp, so I quickly started the fire so that we could cook for the rats and get them out the way, but I had finished cooking and still no Heksie or Wendy, so thought that they had decided to duck us.
A few minutes later my phone went and it turned out they were still coming, but Wendy had to finish her homemade brew first, which sounded very interesting.
At around 7 all arrived, I added more wood to the fire, Heksie’s mom made toasties for all us and we sat chatting about a wide range of things from sightings to forums, including ablution experiences and it turns out that Wendy has a nifty contraption for this and acts like she’s parked on the side of the road making coffee when using it, so I put that one in the memory bank if I ever spotted WendyA on the road “making coffee” .
Just after we finished eating Wendy pulled out another cool contraption, a cigarette making machine which rolls a prefect smoke and I was duly impressed.
A little later the darn rain arrived, so we had to duck inside, which was a squeeze in the EH5, but we managed and fortunately the rats don’t wake for much, so we didn’t disturb them.
Heksie’s mom I think eventually called it after 10, which was fortunate as my teeth were starting to hang out for a few more dops and with RP on his way the next day it could have been a very long 2 nights.
It was so cool to finally have a chance to chat and it’s always awesome meeting people who love Kruger like we do.
To be continued
