Thunderbolt and lightning (v.v.frightening indeed)

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  Campfire Safaris, South Africa
Monday, October 8, 2007

Wow! The last couple of days have been eventful -a massive thunderstorm with seriously impressive lightning struck last night waking us all especially those who were sleeping on the tower who maintain it took a hit! (it does however have a deflector so no harm done to anyone!) I have never heard or felt thunder like it -it went right thru me.
This morning as we were all blearily coming to ready for another morning's work - this time anti-erosion work which involves disentangling huge piles of assorted branches and then dragging them to to nearby area of the farm that has undergone erosion damage leaving in its wake a moonscape of sandy soil with minimum vegetaion and huge craters which we fill with the aforementioned branches. However, b4 we could get to work a call came in the radio to tell us that lions had been spotted on Campfire! and with that we all leapt into the bakkie and headed off in the direction we had been given. After about quarter of an hour we came across another vehicle that had radioed us and we were able to see 3 lions albeit briefly as they decided thst didn't wish to be gawped at and ran off. We caught sight of them briefly a bit later but also saw evidence of their travels with lots of fresh prints around the dam area. What a great sighting! This came on the back of a another call the other evening whilst we were still out on our usual afternoon bush walk - the word was "elephants at the dam!!" Again, all into the bakkie and over tho the dam - 2 big male ellies could be seen amongst the trrees at the side of the dam.

Buffalo@ Kruger

The first we saw of the 2nd one was a huge tree being shaken and then casually uprooted - their strength is phenomenal and to be close and witness this is just fantastic. Letitia (our guide ) was happy that we could get closer so we disembarked from the bakkie and proceeded on foot until we were finally within about 40-50ft of where they were eating - stunning!
After this morning's excitment we went into Hoedspruit to do the weekly shop (about 20km away, 4km on dirt roads across the reserve and then about 16km on a main road) About half way in we sudenlly spotted ellies visible from the road - there were 9 of them -a bachelor herd with 2 quite small males . We pulled off onto the side of the road and sat and watched then for about 20 mins - I could have sat there for hours watching them for hours, observing them stripping bark, gently nudging over trees, digging in the soil for roots and watching them using their trunks with the most amazing dexterity - wonderful.
Excitement over we proceeded to do mundane chores in town. On the way back however more delights were in store.... The ellies hadn't moved far so we saw them again, and then further along the road; 5 giraffe, zebra, some blue wildebeest and 2 buffalo and boy , was one of them a big buggger! The joy of seeing all these guys was not diminished one bit by the fact that that not one of 10 of us had a camera on them! Mind you sometimes it's better to just watch and enjoy and not become obsessed with becoming snap happy.
So why, when I started putting this together on Monday am I still sorting it today (Thursday)? It's because like a lot of things in Africa -stuff falls over without too much provocation -i.e the internet crashes in the face of bad weather as does the electricity supply (we've had 2 powercuts in 5 days) Also , I've been off Campfire for 2 days on a visit to Kruger and then driving the Panoramic route -a fabulous route with various stop off points with great views and places of interest.

Ellie at the dam

And do you know what? We had the BEST luck in Kruger -we saw a leopard walking as bold as you like across an open space!! We were practically speechless with disbelief! If you consider that leopards are prinicpally nocturnal and usually only hide up a tree during the day it was staggering to see one in the day. Our luck continued to hold as we encountered 2 rather thin, knackered and tatty looking male lions who decided to take a walk on the tarmac road we were on. Again, fantastic close up views of them. We also saw (in the distance - bins required for this one ) lions feasting on a kill of a zebra they had taken down just 20 mins earlier .
Talking of which, on our usual bush walk on Tuesday when the majority of the others were away on a hike, Helen, Jo and I were lead by 2 guides. At one point I noticed a bird of prey in the sky and recognised it as a bataleur. Now this bird has a particular function; it acts as a signaller to vultures that there is a kill below where it is flying. After some minutes there were vultures in the sky (did you know that they can see up to 70km? yes I did mean kms -which is why they are killed by some for their brain and eyes as they believe that vultures can see into the future and can predict where to find a kill rather than actually being able to see that far) and their numbers were increasing - it looked like we were in the vicinity of a fairly recent kill. We progressed warily (as you would expect) as we had no idea if the predator(s) were still around -we're talking lions here - probably the 3 we'd seen the other day.

Impala kill on Campfire

We crept towards the area where we could hear the noise of vultures on the ground and then we could see them thru the bush - about 20 vultures - and then a jcakal ran off. We circled round the area absolutely silent, heads swivelling like in the Exorcist responding only to hand signals given by Bea. For the first time on a bush walk I was thinking "I must be nuts!! I'm willingly walking towards a kill where there are vultures, we are 5 completely unarmed women with nothing more than a water bottle and 3 cameras between us for protection"
We moved a little closer and unfortunately disturbed the vultures who flew up into the surrounding trees and then....... the stench -you can smell a recentish kill long b4 you see it (urrrgh!)- the animal was an impala -it still had its head and horns but the rest was pretty much demolished- it had probably been killed the previous night. I tell you what tho - what an adrenalin rush - ok; as there were vultures on the ground it was unlikely that there would still be big predators around -hyena and lions etc but even so you can't afford to be complacent, and of course whilst you're straining to check out every piece of vegetation -everything sand coloured starts to become a lion.... Fantastic tho. Wow!
On a admin note , a couple of you have nmentioned frustrations with posting on the site -please do feel free to email me in the ususal way (thanks Lesley) and esp if it's something you don't want the rest of the world to see!
Also for those of you who said you wanted to write; the address is Sally Howse, C/o Campfire Safaris, PO Box 100, Hoedspruit,South Africa -it'll take 1-2 weeks to get here -I'd love to hear from someone - especially as the gang here don't think I've any mates.
I have some photos on my stick now and am going to try and put some in my photo album on this site - don't hold your breath tho.
Lots of love, and still in one piece, Africa Sal.
xxx

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Leopard @ Kruger

Lions @ Kruger

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