🙂 Amazing Private Camp. Guided Bush Walks
This is just a fantastic camp where SANParks Honorary Rangers volunteer to give their time to support the camp, cooking and guiding – Jaco and Vannessa were our Guides – AMAZING. We had three nights and did two walks a day tracking leopards, lions etc … Fabulous.
There is nothing like a bush walk to bring you closer to nature – the smell, sounds and sights are 4 dimensional – fantastic.
Jaco rescued an injured red billed kwela.
We stopped for sundowners on the river – as we were carrying our cool boxes we spotted a young lioness eyeing us up – Jaco shoo’d her and she ran off…Yikes! After we finished our drinks he had to bring the vehicle up close as she had returned and had lost her fear now that the sun had set!
Back at camp – dinner was served with the most amazing decorations. We had Norman Lok and Ingrid as our hosts- Superb! The baboons sneaked in if you did not close the doors! The resident genet was always on the lookout for some scraps!
We were up at dawn to commence the walk for the next day. After a full day of walking dinner was very welcome! That afternoon we went for sundowners and we had a curious lioness that we nearly bumped into! finished off the evening around the campfire with Vanessa and Brendon keeping us entertained with their guitars – heaven…
The decorations at SRBC for every meal are so thoughtful…
The next day we did a morning walk on the Sand River which was great. We set off at dawn with an ellie watching us from behind the bushes!
We watched giraffe which were watching us!
We found a super fresh male leopard track …which we followed! We found where the leopard had hoisted a kill and Jaco showed us the hyena tracks which had dragged off the remainder of the carcass … he showed us the leopard poo which was black but with a bit of white and a bit runny because the carcass was old and the leopard had ingested some bone (hence the white) and it was old (hence the poo a bit runny … fascinating!!! When we drove off after sundowners we saw the same leopard in the river – AMAZING. (Blurry pics – but evidence!)
Once we left this beauty we drove along the river bed and spotted a lioness carrying her absolutely tiny cubs from one den to the other …very special and one for the memory banks as we couldn’t photograph it….just incredible. An amazing Day… Paul was a tad chilly on the way back to camp!
We headed back for lunch.
We found a a long train of hairy caterpillars blocking our pathway. This timely phenomenon is the caterpillar phase of the processionally moths or Anaphe reticulate from the Notodontidae family. Once the eggs hatch, in this area usually near a Grewia tree (Wild Raisin) they begin to feed on the leaves of their first host plant. Once having devoured every last leaf, they trail off in single-file to their next meal. Head to toe in a straight line, these caterpillars follow a silken thread started by their leader. If the line gets disturbed, they come to a complete stop and are disorientated for a while before a new leader takes control and leads the sometimes up to 600 odd larvae onwards. When they begin to make silken cocoons, they congregate together into what is called a ‘bag nest’ and are known to be incredibly durable. If touched the caterpillars will give you a rash.
The next morning we found a pride of lions on the road. One of the lionesses had a very nasty injury.
During the course of the day we also had some other brilliant sightings. Elephants having a ball!
Some of the rarer creatures
On our last evening we enjoyed sundowners at … we frightened a couple of lions who disappeared into the bush only to be replaced by a herd of elephants coming for a drink…we waited patiently before they left so that we could take our group photos.
As we headed back we switched off the engine to watch these majestic creatures in the full moon – Magic.
