Africa Wild

Hey Guys,

Things are hectic at work at the moment, so this is just a short summary of our trip to Imfolozi on the weekend.

On Monday morning last week I spotted a cancellation at Mpila camp for Saturday night, so the brain immediately started plotting, but due to 3 Kruger trips this year, a meet in the Imfolozi area in July and another 3 day Imfolozi trip in August that are already booked we are maxed out.

The nagging in the brain continued at work, so I phoned the Cow and we took the plunge.

Friday night ended up chaos at our place as I worked in the Wild Coast that day, so got home later then expected and we had left the shopping and packing to the last minute, which for a neurotic planner like myself, isn’t a good recipe, so all were getting it in the ear as the blood pressure climbed, but a few solid G&T’s sorted things out for me, so I rolled up a pair of shorts, an AW shirt, under pants and put them in the bag, looked at the Cow and said “I’m done”, which didn’t go down well, so I retreated to the veranda and my G&T.

To be continued and finished tonight (but I have to braai, so it may be late )

Imfolozi is a 3 hour drive from our place, so the plan was to get up at 2am so that we could be at the gate when it opened, but I hadn’t planned on “enjoying” the Friday night as much as I did, therefore we only surfaced at about 3:30am and got to Imfolozi just after 7am.

Nyalazi Gate to Mpila camp produced all the usual gang, including, giraffe, buffalo and distance elephant, but the sun wasn’t through the morning clouds yet, so we just enjoyed the sightings and didn’t bother taking pics.

We could only book in at 1pm, so continued on past Mpila to the Sontuli loop, which produced an elephant family and this is always “interesting” in Imfolozi because I still think that they eat the coastal giggle twig as they are never happy to see vehicles.





Next up was a lone buffalo that had a problem in a sensitive area.



The rest of the loop was relatively quiet, so we headed on up to UBhejane hide so that we could use the loo and give the rats some time out of the car.
All the locals were hanging around at the hide.











More people started to arrive at the hide, which always makes me uncomfortable because the rats can’t sit still for long periods and when Bushpig started paging through the hide’s sighting book I realised that it was time to leave before pages got coloured in or removed, so we decided to head on down to Mpafa Hide, which hopefully had less occupants.

Next up we found a giraffe next to the road that we all thought was “faulty” from previous trips, because he pulled the same faces and wasn’t concerned about how close we got.





When we arrived at Mpafa Hide there were already about 5 cars parked outside, so we decided to continue on, but as I drove off I heard a baboon let rip from the direction of the hide, so I reversed back into the car park and ducked off down the path to the hide with Bushpig while the others waited in the car.

The pathway to the hide always gives me the creeps when I need to control Bushpig as it’s an “open” pathway and the other rats know to walk next to me, but Bushpig lost its ears again today and took off ahead of me.

I was nearly at the hide when Bushpig came flying back towards me along with a few other ex hide occupants who had big eyes, “I’m calling mommy, there’s lion”, which caused me to pull out a Bushpig rugby tackle.

An ex hide occupant who was hastily heading towards the car park explained that a large male lion had just come down to the water to drink and then 2 more females. The male had moved off, but the females were now heading towards the side of the hide, which had no door, so they were ducking for their car.

I grabbed the protesting Bushpig and slowly continued to the hide, which still had a few remaining occupants and the one guy kept saying “Is it safe”, so I guessed that the lions were still around ,but nobody seemed to know where they had gone.

The boons were still shouting their heads off though.





A lone boon next to the hide didn’t seem interested in the commotion being made by the rest and seemed more content to relieve himself on a rock in front of the hide, which distracted all for a few seconds.



Just then a movement to the left of the hide caught my eye, it was a lioness lying in the grass, so I grabbed Bushpig again and headed back to the car to call the others, who weren’t that keen to walk down the path, but eventually followed.

We stopped about 10m from the hide because the hide crowd had gathered on the pathway as the visual of the 2 females was better from there, but the lions seemed agitated by our presence as there was plenty of tail flicking going on.

I managed to snap off two blurred pics and one reasonable pic before they got up and ducked off into the bush, but I have to admit that it was a strange feeling standing there in the open watching them.



To be continued

Mel wrote:Ah, more of the Brown Family Saga...
Already had a few giggles again.

The buff's private don't look really nice. Ouch!

When you call a nyala a local, is it a commonly seen local as well?

As for the lion...

Hey Mel,

Nyala are locals in Imfolozi and I have never been there more than 1 day without spotting them, hence the reason I was initially confused at Kruger when some made a big deal about spotting them, that’s until I tried to find them in KNP -O -O

The rats were starting to complain about their stomachs, so we decided to head back to Mpila’s day visitor section at about 11am for a lunch time braai.

There’s something about a braai and beer, but I only had a bottle of cane, which didn’t seem like a good idea before lunch, so I started the fire and ducked off to the camp shop to buy 3 beers while the Cow was distracted by a few day visitor zebra that had arrived.

I returned to find the Cow busy with the cooking, so I decided to push the issue by suggesting that she went and booked us into our unit while I finished cooking.



She agreed, which made the first beer go down even better, but then asked “Where’s the wild card and confirmation of booking”, which resulted in a diversion and blame shift from me “Didn’t you pack it!!”, “NO, that’s your department”, so I developed an instant pelican and said “Must I do everything”, which caused the Cow to storm off with the camera after a visiting warthog and I headed back to the shop for 3 more beers.



After a few more beers things calmed and the Cow volunteered to challenge the book in process, which resulted in another beer going down in celebration.
She phoned the wild card gang, spun a story at reception and just after 1pm we were booked in, which resulted in further celebration and another beer.
We had been allocated unit 15, which is the last unit at the end of the camp and the most private, so my teeth were hanging out again, so it was time for another beer to celebrate and I proceeded to build my usual “braai castle” for later.



The 4 hours sleep from the night before and the lunch time beers were starting to drill me, but the rats wouldn’t consider giving an hour’s peace, so just before 4pm we headed out again towards Mpafa Hide to see if we could find the lion again, but strangely we were the only people at the hide and only a few locals were hanging around.







Daylight hours were fading fast, so I decided to head towards “viewpoint 17” which is an old favourite for us.

Halfway there we found a few rhino and about 50m from the view point a lioness showed herself.







It was now about 5:30pm and almost pitch black, but Imfolozi’s gate closing is only at 6pm, even in winter, so we had half an hour’s drive back to camp in the dark, which is a complete waste of time without a torch, so I just put the blinkers on and headed back for a braai.







To be continued

There’s no electricity at Mpila camp between 10pm and 7am, so it can be a mission in the mornings, especially in winter, trying to pack up and load the car in the dark all sharing torches, so although we were up at 5am, only got on the road at about 6:30am.

We still had a 3 hour drive home, so the plan was do head down towards Cengeni Gate, turn around, head back towards Nyalazi Gate and leave the park at around 10am.
Our first sighting of the morning got the rats highly excited and war stories started in the back seat from Bushpig about a giant lion cruising around, which gave Albert eyes like saucers.

There was nothing abnormal about the size of the print, but I let Bushpig continue as she was hyping the others up for the morning drive, which is always good for entertainment.



Next up was all the usual gang, a herd of buffalo and then a scallywag ducking for cover.







I know that wild dog like to hang out close to Cengeni Gate, so we decided to take a short trip down the 8km dead end with the hope of finding them and just before I was going to turn around a cool lady waved us down and said “Dogs just around the corner”.





There were plenty of dogs lying all over the place and we estimated more than 15 in total, but they were lazy and after our last Kruger trip the rats had decided that dogs were fairly common, so they started their rubbish after 10 minutes. (They don’t realise that it may be many more trips before they see them again ).

We took a few more pics of the odd one that got up, but the weather hadn’t improved and the light was bad, so we turned and ducked for Nyalazi Gate to exit.

A few km before the end of the dirt road section, which is a few km before Mpila camp, we found a road block and another waiting in ambush.





We took a few pics of the ambush lady and moved closer to the road block lady, who didn’t seem to mind us slowly approaching, but ambush lady seemed to get jealous, so approached us and lay down next to the car.







She didn’t seem to mind us at all and even permitted a few close up abstract shots





The road block lady in front of us seemed to get irritated with a car that had arrived behind her and moved off, so ambush gave us a last “smile” and followed her sister into the bush.





We had one last encounter just before the gate and it was one of those smoked up Imfolozi ellies. He chased us for about 500m down the road before he got bored and ducked off into the bush.





Thanks for checking out our short overnight trip guys