Africa Wild

We all started to plan the afternoon. It was quickly decided that we would return to find the lions for Mel and her dad, as they hadn’t been exactly blessed with the big cats in Kruger. With SO wearing his lucky shirt nothing could go wrong, or so we thought.

Well, it didn’t go wrong and we experienced a beaming Mel and Dad! Having seen lions before we let our friends have the pole position to get a better look and were happy to watch from the backrow.

What I hadn’t realized back then was, that they were different lions to those we had seen before. Well, actually they were the same as in the morning, but not the same as the previous day. At least the guys were different ones. The lady was Josie who we had seen when we had spotted the lions the second time on our first full day. The boys however weren’t Gina’s youngsters. They were Norman and Zwaai. Although, to this day it still passes up on me who is who. Am in contact with Megan to try to find out.

One of them came walking towards the road and was roaring a welcome tune:

He had Josie in tow as well:



Greets, mate!


Norman or Zwaai was definitely in a mood for posing

And as I had a lot of lens to cover a very short distance I started to build my own lion puzzle...







With that we had seen 7 out of the 9 Addo lions!!!

Despite some pushy enquiry whether Ronnie wanted to stay for dinner with us that night, he decided that he was going home. Fair enough, as he was meant to be back the next day to meet up with us again and guide us around through Addo once more. We said our goodbyes for the day and got back on our way home at then past five, thinking that we would be able to make it to the main camp just about in time. But as we were approaching the public road that leads through Addo, I got doubts and we decided to leave the park on the Addo side, to re-enter at the main gate which is possible even after gate closing time regarding the game area. Thanks for that incredibly helpful tip, Ronnie! I’m sure you saved us some embarrassment and a fine.


It got late that night… It must have been somewhere close to midnight – or a case of beer - when we finally decided that bed would be the thing to do as we were going to meet up with Ronnie again early next morning and another forumite – Philip!!!

Thanks Mel for sharing this very special meeting.

Believe me I was very tempted to go back to the Main Camp after viewing the lions and enjoying the rest of the evening with you folk.

Addo
28/03/2012

Philip had offered to bring a safari vehicle in order for us all to be on one car. For some reason it wasn’t meant to happen, but at the end of the day we all were not too sad about it as it was raining cats and dogs in the morning of the 28th.
Sightings were few and far between accordingly, but we still enjoyed ourselves tremendously with Spots and Dad getting their private guiding from Ronnie and the two Mels sharing the car with Philip.

Philip, it was great having you around that day. Another very special meeting to me after all the fun and serious things we both had shared on the forums for quite a while! I’ll never forget your happy face when we got to that special sighting!

Sooo, off the six of us went. We did see the one or the other critter, but as the light was hideous in the rain I never bothered to get my camera wet by holding it out of the car. At Zurkoop lookout point we go out of the car and watched the stuff around us. Among others – by now known birds as the speckled mousebird, helmeted guineafowls, the fiscal shrikes and flycatchers – we saw a female greater double-coloured sunbird which sat long enough to allow a halfway acceptable shot.


(Tick!)

Later we found a jackal buzzard quite close to the road:

One of the most memorable sightings was a roadbloack on the Gorah loop. At least I think, it was Gorah. With Ronnie driving the other car and leading our little convoy of two cars, I didn’t really pay attention to where we going as that car in front of us – being Mel’s and Dad’s light blue Terios as in difference to our bright red Terios – had stopped displaying the brake lights and I definitely didn’t feel like bumping into them in case of a sudden halt. And sudden halt it was! A huge boy was standing in the middle of the road… Snoozing… Kind of. Every now and then he would move and all around us ellies, ellies and some more ellies. It was definitely a case of lens overkill so close were they.

As with the lions yesterday, I started an ellie puzzle this time around:

As we were caught in the middle there was no chance of maneuvering the car in a way that all of us could take photos, so I just held my camera out and shot away until I had what I wanted:



He soon would awake fully again and started to investigate his surroundings. On the other side of him, basically facing us, there was a small hideously coloured car in a mélange of gold-orange-brown. Obviously Mr. Ellie took a liking to the car and began to trunk it all over. The occupants of the mini didn’t manage to wind up their windows in time and before they knew they had an ellie trunk inside! I can only relay SO’s observations as they were parked in front of us and were able to see better, but I reckon this describes best what SO later related about their reactions. But once the traffic jam had lifted they drove by and stopped quickly. I don’t think I have ever seen such extremely happy people before! Funnily enough, those people were our neighbours in the rondavels, too. So we were able to take a close look at their car later on. And you could definitely the ellie’s benchmark!

And we all were absolutely over the moon as well. After a really quiet morning with little photo opportunity, this sighting had made our day!

Before we got back to the camp for our lunch break, another hartebeest proved to be very obliging and waited patiently until I was done with my photo.



In the camp a southern tchagra enabled me to tick off yet another bird species:

For the afternoon drive, Philip had asked to go down south to maybe find the lions. We packed our magnet with SO sticking in it and headed towards the Colchester Section. As we were driving I had hardly said to Mel and Philip (who were with me in the car) that we needn’t be too alert (we were chatting way too much to make good game spotters) as we would just drive up to any traffic jam and see the lions, when we to hit a proper traffic jam and it was indeed lions the cars were parked for. Alas, it was a very tight spot the lions had chosen with a less good view than the days before. And it was Norman and Zwaai who laid there in the grass.

Ronnie has done the maths by now: From last night until this afternoon the two of them and Josie had walked a whopping 10 to 12 kilometres to decorate the area along the main route connecting Colchester and Main Game Area.

One of them got up and crossed the road. Coming from the left and me being the driver, this is all I could get …





… before have to retreat to shooting through the windscreen.

Once more I was in the wrong car as Mr. Scareye (working title until I know who he is…) passed right in front of the boys’ car with Ronnie, Dad and SO inside.

We didn’t stay for long. Too many cars around and little leeway which spoilt the fun. Instead we proceeded to Vukani once more and were treated with a BEAUTIFUL kudu:



And some more eland!