Africa Wild

9th October Talamati to Lower Sabie continued

At around 11:30am Hawkeyes and I were still stuffed and in bed, the Cow was into a book and the junior rats were bored, so they went on their own sighting mission around camp.



I was out for the count, so I can only relay the next section based on what the Cow told me.

Albert and Bushpig were cruising along the fence in front of our unit looking for the local bushbuck, which pops up at times during the day, when Albert spotted something across the river and sounded the alarm.

I woke as the Cow charged into the room and I only needed to hear 1 word “leopard”, but the balance was completely off and I felt drunk, so after a few sideways movements I made it outside.

Albert’s teeth were hanging out big time “I spotted a leopard dad!”

“Where’s it?”

“There, walking along”



We followed along next to the leopard until just before Keartland guest house and then the leopard paused and I clicked what was going to happen.

“The leopard’s going to take out an impala!” “Take pics, move it, quick!”

As I finished my sentence the leopard charged in and grabbed an impala. The Cow got blurred bush with her camera and I just fired away blindly with my camera without even looking through the viewfinder, but got the bushes below the leopard as the attack happened and only a few proof pics of the leopard suffocating the impala.



We watched the leopard for another 5 minutes before it dragged the impala into the bush and out of sight. I couldn’t believe that we had just witnessed a leopard kill in the middle of the day from camp with nobody else around, especially since the camp was full of people who hadn’t even noticed what was going on. The SANParks cleaner at Keartland had picked up on the action though and invited us in to get a better view, but the leopard was soon out of sight from that position also.

This was the rats second leopard kill, but never from camp, so Albert was now strutting around like a hero, but if it wasn’t for her little beady eyes we would have missed the entire thing, so she scored plenty praise. This has also set the tone for future visits as Bushpig can’t lose, so she charged off back to our unit to get binoculars so she could also find a leopard and Albert did the same to extend her lead. They spent the rest of the afternoon plotting the opposite bank for another leopard and they are definitely going to continue with this on future visits, therefore the Cow and I can relax and wait for the alarm.

The adrenalin faded and so did I, therefore it was back to bed for me until around 5pm, but the junior rats continued their fence patrol and the Cow got some pics of the “action” around camp.











Our afternoon drive only started after 5pm, so we just cruised up towards Lubyelubye and back to camp. A few of the normal gang showed up including a RP modelling applicant and a lioness peeking through the grass.





After supper, which I couldn’t eat, things started to get worse and for some strange reason I was now getting red lines popping up all over my chest and stomach, so I crashed early.

To be continued

Thanks Alf, Flutts, Lisbeth, pooky, Pumbaa, RP and Mel for checking out the previous episode and commenting

Lower Sabie to Home

Today we were meant to be leaving Kruger and heading for Imfolozi, but as I woke I knew I was in serious trouble as once again I was battling to remain conscious, the “red lines” had spread all over, I had a tingling feeling in my arms and legs and my pulse rate was going through the roof, so I informed the Cow in broken English that I couldn’t drive, which opened a new can of worms as she would have to take over.

I don’t remember packing the car or leaving Lower Sabie and I was now in and out of consciousness, so the Cow pushed it up to 50km/h, but just after halfway to Croc Bridge Hawkeyes started with a massive seizure in the back, I was out of it in the front and the junior rats were panicking, so the Cow put the hazards on and put her foot down.

I have been expecting a drama as the Cow was almost pushing people off the road, she floored it through a crowd of cars observing ellies, etc, but she didn’t have a choice. We supposedly drove past plenty animals and missed out on pics, but we had pushed our luck a little too far medically, so stopping was out of the question.

By the time we pulled into Croc Bridge Hawkeyes was starting to come out of the seizure, but it had been 11 minutes, she had lost control of some bodily functions and was “drooling” from the mouth and battling to breath, which was something new, so the panic escalated. The Cow gave her the “5 minute or more seizure medicine” which knocks her out and floored it out of the park.

I don’t remember much of the drive home and we never even got to Imfolozi, so a paid weekend went to waste. The Cow has never driven more than 100km at 1 hit and certainly never a large bakkie, so I don’t know how she did it, but she drove the entire trip from Kruger to Toti in one hit.

In summary I had developed two ulcers, 1 where the stomach joins to the small intestine and another where the small intestine joins to the large intestine. The upper ulcer had started “leaking” toxins and these had entered my blood stream and basically all my organs were shutting down. I ended up in Kingsway hospital until the Wednesday and it should have been longer, but I’m a difficult character in a public ward full of snoring, farting individuals, so I booked myself out against the advice of the specialist and I’m sure secretly the nurses were happy to see me go.

I was informed that I was lucky and should have been admitted immediately to a hospital in the Nelspruit area, but then I would have missed 2 days in Kruger. I still have a fairly long road to travel and have been informed that I will definitely need an operation in the near future to remove the 1 ulcer, but at the moment the docs are just trying to control it with meds.

Hawkeyes also ended up in hospital as she had another big seizure while the docs were dealing with me which caused them to leave me and charge around trying to sort her out. She has been admitted a few more times since, but she hasn’t had a seizure for 9 weeks now, touch wood, and things are looking more positive. The neurologists are treating her with 2 different epilepsy medicines and some form of hormone treatment due to a chemical imbalance caused by all the chemo she had a few years ago. We don’t fully understand this hormone stuff, but she’s seeing another specialist shortly who supposedly is the best, so I should have more information then.

I hope all this personal medical rubbish didn’t detract too much from the TT, but I had to include it as things wouldn’t have made sense without it.

Thanks to all of you guys that have shared our adventure with us and for allowing us the opportunity to relive portions of our trip.

Bushcraft, the Cow and the Rats