Taking Tembe Kids on Safari with Thulani

[Richprins]

Nice escape pic!

Your elephant is also getting gloser and gloser...snap!

[Toko]

The next morning starts with an early coffee outside the tent chatting to this wolf spider. It teaches me that its very high cephalothorax is good for burrowing.



And another coffee visitor

[Toko]

An elephant feeding site, ellies go for the roots and they like them - Zulu Podberry (Dialium schlechteri) a characteristic tree in the sand forest!



It's still greyish and coldish



The roads are imprinted with all kind of tracks, here an interesting one: A leopard with cub on top of an elephant track

[Toko]

Some thick sand



and the recently burnt open woodland



The reedbucks often wander into the ashes looking for fresh fresh sprouts







A musth bull left his message here: "Hello I'm in very good condition, follow my dribbles "

[Toko]

A lovely Greenthorn Torchwood (Balanites maughamii)



This bull is busy with seismic communication, too







Now and then he lays its trunk on the ground and freezes.



Eventually he gets the message and moves off

[Toko]

A Macrotermes castel in the thicket and an antlion trap

[Richprins]

This is very good again, Dear, like a hidden paradise on our doorstep!


Didn't know you had so much bush knowledge?


That last reedbuck pic with the backlighting is very evocative!

[ExFmem]

Those are some impressive, but somewhat scary, elephants!

I had a chuckle over the escape pic that shows so much motion.

Of course I like the spider , and the pics of the tracks - prints on prints - are really interesting. Amazing how much knowledge can be gotten from simply studying one's surroundings.

[Lisbeth]

It was about time to continue this trip

Wonderful elephant in the rain, doing tricks

A very close escape

Must be lovely to wake up in the morning having a chat with a spider and an antelope

That a beautiful tree, the Greenthorn Torchwood and it looks like the name

You forgot the car before the elephant before the leopard with cub

The termite castle is pretty

[Toko]

Tembe is a good place to get some bush knowledge: perfect prints everywhere on the sand roads, roadside vegetation not cleared, so you can touch the trees from the car, you can leave the car, noboday cares and the camp is just in the middle of natural sand forest.
Most of the area is thick bush where you don't spot animals easily, this draws your attention to spoor, alarm calls and other sounds

And some of their guides are just awesome, they just know everything, not only their birds . Overnight price is incl. meals and guided drives, so you can choose whether or not you want to do your own learning trip or just relax enjoying what the guide will dish out of his knowledge. These guys are not the ones who only studied the wildlife in courses in some "college", they are people from the area who learned the bird calls and the plants when they were kids out in the bush herding cattle. Unfortunately this generation of guides will die out soon .
Self driving in Tembe is something you should not do as a frist timer, you'll simply get lost there or stuck in deep sand when you don't know the area. Try to read the available map and translate it to what you see when you are out there and you'll find yourself in the middle of some sand tracks in some state of confusion but it enhances your photographic memory and spatial orientation skills


So next stop was Mfungeni pan