While what I want is animals and birds to photograph, peace and quiet and preferably all of this for free, or the closest thing thereto.
But this year we got fairly close. The plan was to go to Maphelane. But we invited some friends, and by the time they had made up their minds not to join us, we couldn't get all the dates we wanted. My leave started on the 13th, and we could stay at Maphelane untill the 21st, whereafter we would move to Phongolo (a place I had visited for about an hour earlier in the year, and who still had space). We wanted to be home for Christmas, as we did not want to leave my mother alone for Christmas this year as my father had passed away earlier this year.
So on Saturday morning the 13th we departed on our advanture. Along the way, we were treated to a glorious sunrise.
The road was a lot quieter than I had anticipated, excpt for a fair amount of slow traffic after Piet Retief. It was cloudy with intermittent light rin all the way. After leaving the N2 though, the road got progressively worse. The first section is tar, but very badly potholed. Fortunately my car handles these conditions extremely well as it has large tires on small rims and a very robust undercarriage, so we could still make pretty good time. The last 40km is dirt though, and pretty bad at that, a strange undulating road that almost creates seasickness, full of mud pools and winding through a forest.
After a simple and friendly booking-in procedure, we proceded on our search for campsite no. 42. Shortly after arrival, a red duiker came to inspect our camp setup.
After setting up camp, we went looking for the beach. Maphelane has beautiful, wide and fairly quiet beaches, although we did see a fair number of crabs.
After a quiet night (except for lots of bird-song and the odd hippo laughing) morning broke cloudy and cool. I soon set off to surround my environs.
Brown-hooded Kingfisher:
Dark-capped Bulbul:
"Bungee worm", hanging by a thread:
A walk along the spit of land between the river and the sea delivered quite a selection of shorebirds.
Common Sandpiper:
Common Ringed Plover:
Common Sandpiper:
White-fronted Plover:
Grey Plover:
Common Whimbrel:
Swift and Caspian Tern:
Swift Tern:
Terns, mostly Swift:
Sandwich Tern:
Swift Tern:
