Africa Wild

Hey Guys,

I’m a little late on this TT but work has been hectic the last few months and it wasn’t a great trip for us, so I have also lacked motivation to write about it.

This was the 2nd trip to KNP this year for Bushcraft, The Cow, Hawkeyes, Bushpig and Albert and due to obvious reasons, October school holidays were our only option. We chopped and changed a little which in hindsight was probably a mistake, but the final trip was as per below.

28th, 29th and 30th Lower Sabie
1st Olifants
2nd, 3rd and 4th Skukuza
5th and 6th Lower Sabie

We once again hit a medical speed wobble which will pop up during the TT and this time the entire family were affected and it was part of the reason our trip went “pear shaped”.

The weather was very weird with a mixed bag, however it wasn’t nearly as hot as we have learnt to expect during the month of October and as usual we stuffed up plenty photo opportunities which seems to bother me less each trip, hence I must be “mellowing out” with age.

We caught up with some familiar friends/wildies a few times during the trip, Penny and Bobby, who know the park like the “back of their hand”, so besides the fact that they are great people, we always learn something new from them.

We battled sighting wise, especially initially for our favourite animal, the leopard, which always causes tension and pelicans to grow in our car. I’m not sure why it was so quiet sighting wise; however the grass was longer than we have ever seen it for the month of October and it almost felt like an April trip after heavy February rains. The grass was mostly dead though, but it was definitely still longer in places than it was during our April trip a few months prior. I believe Penny and Bobby also found it a major battle, which is very unusual for October in our opinion as the grass is normally at its shortest. The rhino population is again a concern for me and they were missing from many of the usual spots.

In summary, the trip was probably one of our worst all round, which may have been due to the medical issues and it did feel like a mission on some days to find something to get the excitement going, especially once the medical issue popped up, however hang around as there are a few things of interest.

To be continued

28th Home to Lower Sabie

I had been working 12 hour days for a few months prior to this trip, so I had left everything to the Cow, but that’s never easy for a neurotic planner like me, so as we pulled out the driveway at 5am I chirped the Cow

“Do we have everything?”

The Cow went through a long random list out loud and then said “Yes”

I had taken a quick look through everything while packing the car so I also felt comfortable.

We hit some of the Richards Bay rush hour, however the trip was fairly normal, so we were handing in passports at the SA/Swazi border at around 8:30am.
Minutes later the SA official said

“Please can I have the unabridged birth certificates for the kids?”

The Cow looked at me and I recognised the facial expression so my cheesy disappeared instantly and I quickly turned into Chucky.

“Don’t look at me!”

The Cow then put her fingers to her mouth which I have also learnt over the years means the worst, so I got wilder

“You packed everything, why are you looking at me!”

I was now in meltdown mode because I knew then that we didn’t have them, which meant we had to drive all the way back to Toti to get them, which also meant we wouldn’t make it to Kruger today and we would have to start all over again tomorrow.

“$^&$%* they remain in that folder and always have”

The Cow then blurted out “I took them out”

“Why would you do that and not put them back…#$^#$”

The Cow then turned from confusion to attack mode “Hey, you can’t talk like that in here, get out!”

Fortunately the Cow has a much calmer head than me and she managed to negotiate an email address and fax number out of the official and he agreed to accept either option while I was overreacting in the car park outside.

The plan was to phone my mother, ask her to get them and then to drive to the post office up the road and fax them through as my mom would have no idea how to use a scanner, but now she wasn’t answering her phone which was making the situation more tense.

After half an hour of trying I was about to blow and just drive home, however on around the 30th attempt my mom answered and said she would help, but now the Cow couldn’t remember exactly where she had put them so my mom had to turn all the draws in our room upside down and search for them which embarrassingly turned me faultier.

To cut a long story short, the post office fax mission didn’t work, but as luck would have it my mom bumped into a friend of the Cows while there who agreed to help and the emails arrived and they were accepted.

Minutes later there was another issue.

The SA official had stuffed up the vehicle number plate entry and captured a “0” instead of a “6” which caused the system to flag our car as a stolen vehicle.
Fortunately we had all the vehicle papers, etc; however I was in no condition to deal with incompetence, so walked off into the car park again while the Cow wondered off with a SAP official to another section of the building to resolve which took another half an hour.

More than 2 hours later we were finally through the SA side of the border and proceeded to hand in our passports on the Swazi side.

The Cow was the last to hand her passport in and the Swazi official seemed to be taking rather long and then chirped

“Where’s the stamp from the SA side”

The SA officials had forgotten to stamp the Cow’s passport so now the Cow had to walk all the way back to the SA side and queue for a stupid stamp and then walk all the way back while the rest of us waited on the Swazi side.

While the cow was on the SA side a tour bus arrived on the Swazi side and the queue rapidly extended to outside of the building, so the Cow upon returning had to join the back of the line.

We eventually got into Swaziland just before midday so my hair was standing straight up and I was starting to stress if we would even make camp as we still had to shop in Komatipoort.

It was dark, cold and windy with a little drizzle when we arrived at Croc Bridge gate after 3pm, so we quickly fuelled up and headed straight for Lower Sabie up the H4-2.

Just up the road the Vurhami pride were cooling off on the rocks but we didn’t hang around.
The H5/H4-2 intersection produced a leopard’s kill in a tree, but no leopard. It was a fresh kill so we knew the leopard would return shortly; however time was against us so we moved on.
We stopped briefly a few more times for the usual locals and arrived at Lower Sabie just before 5pm, so decided to cruise up to Lubyelubye 4km from Lower Sabie before booking in.

The Lubyelubye area often produces for us and today was no exception as the “resident” lion pride were parking off in the riverbed just north of the rocks.
We watched the lion for around 10 minutes and then continued up the road to see if we could find a hyena which had crossed while we were watching the lion. Mother hyena was snoozing around 10m off the road, but its junior kept poking its head out of the drain right next to the road.
It had been a long day and everybody was tired of sitting in the car, so we turned and ducked back to Lower Sabie to book in and braai at our dormitory style EH huts.
We got the 2 EH huts we had requested which was lucky, but much to my horror Sanparks had installed pedestal type lights along the road every 5m behind the huts and it was like daylight in the hut at night which doesn’t work for me as it totally destroys the ambience, so the towels provided got utilized as another curtain layer.

I don’t understand why new stuff is continually installed while existing stuff isn’t maintained. For example the relatively new ablution block built to service the huts already had 2 out of the 3 shower heads broken, a basin and urinal leaking and a toilet out of order.

To be continued

Oh dear BC, not a great start to your trip! Bureaucracy is always such a stress!

At least you had some nice sightings on the way up.

So sad to hear that the new ablutions are already in disrepair!

It's a miracle that you are still married

But why do they always make everything so difficult in official SA, instead of using some common sense

BC, that is a very stressful start to your trip. I am also quite a neurotic planner (I prefer the word 'meticulous'! ), as you can imagine how bad it is if you forget some necessary documents on an overseas trip!

Excellent Lion and Hyena sightings for your first afternoon, and very good photography I notice. It is not like you to pass up the chance to see a Leopard though.

I am interested in the front Lubyelubye Lion's condition, as we observed bad mange on several individuals in this pride during our August visit (soon to appear in my TT).

Yay! The Browns Episode 132!

Ai...border wars! You should have paid the bribes, man!

I like the "meticulous" BS, Rattle!

Agreed about the maintenance, BC...

Love the hyena cub!

Lisbeth wrote:Walking barefoot is in any case not very educated in my book

Flutterby wrote:Oh dear BC, not a great start to your trip! Bureaucracy is always such a stress!

At least you had some nice sightings on the way up.

So sad to hear that the new ablutions are already in disrepair!

Flutts. Ja, I'm hoping somebody wakes up and fixes those odd items in the ablutions as they were hundreds when they first opened and it's only small, fairly easy things to fix also

Lisbeth wrote:

It's a miracle that you are still married

But why do they always make everything so difficult in official SA, instead of using some common sense

Lisbeth. Yes, it's a miracle The Cow still brings up my border post behavior every time she's in a mood

Ratel wrote:BC, that is a very stressful start to your trip. I am also quite a neurotic planner (I prefer the word 'meticulous'! ), as you can imagine how bad it is if you forget some necessary documents on an overseas trip!

Excellent Lion and Hyena sightings for your first afternoon, and very good photography I notice. It is not like you to pass up the chance to see a Leopard though.

I am interested in the front Lubyelubye Lion's condition, as we observed bad mange on several individuals in this pride during our August visit (soon to appear in my TT).

Ratel. Yes, not the best start and it set the tone for the first few days The Lubyelubye pride definitely has mange