Great Photos By Ronesh Parbhoo In The Kruger National Park

Burchell's Zebra

The Beautiful Male Lion

Vervet Monkey

26 December 2012

Both Dean and Mark are in the Kruger National Park today with 12 guests. Wishing both guides and guests good sightings and a wonderful safari!

Safari Starting 9th December Ending 13th December 2012

9^th December – Our guests were collected from a guest house in Melville by Dean we then made our way to Nelspruit going through Numbi gate to the camp of Pretoriuskop camp for lunch. After lunch we were told about a leopard sighting near Transport Dam but by the time we got there he had already disappeared. We stopped off a Shithave Dam as well as made a turn around boulders on the way we had good sightings of Impala, Zebra, Elephant, Rhino and Buffalo we then made our way to the camp of Nkambeni for the night.

10^th December – After breakfast we headed out again along the Numbi Gate road with numerous sightings of Impala, Zebra, Hippos, kudu, Elephant, Buffalo, Rhino and Lions on the watergat road we then made out way to Pretoriuskop camp for lunch while awaiting for two new guests to join our group. We then travelled down Napi Road, stopped off at Shithave Dam, going further down Napi and driving on the Napi Boulders loop, then making our way back voortrekker link, and taking the Faye Loop going over to Shabeni Koppies, Shabeni link road then up the Albasini road to the camp. All in all on this route we spotted Impala, Zebra, Rhino, waterbuck and a large elephant bull in musth, that proceeded to charge the vehicle, Dean let him get about four feet away before he moved the vehicle forward just out of his reach. The elephant proceeded to walk behind us in the road.

11^th December – Today once again after breakfast we travelled on the Numbi Gate Tar and Napi road, we then stopped off at Skukuza Camp for a short break before proceeding down the Paul Kruger Gate road onto Doispane then to watergat to see the lions lying next to the reservoir. We then spotted a female leopard 2km from Shithave Dam as well as a male cheetah walking in the road. Other sightings include Rhino, Elephant, another male Leopard 300m down Transport Dam access road, Impala, Baboon, Zebra, Buffalo, Vervet monkeys, hippo and crocodile, after an exciting day we headed back to camp for the night.

12^th December – This morning we did a small drive with general sightings of General game before making our way back to Numbi gate where we handed over two guests to Mark while the rest of us headed out the park to Nelspruit and onwards to Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport. The two guests left with Mark continued their game drive for the day. Mark decided to drive Voortrekker where he came across a herd of Buffalo walking next to the road he then joined up with the H3 where 3 Female lions were walking in the road close to the vehicle they were so close he could put his hand out and touch them, he then turned onto the S114 where a good sighting of 4 hyena pups outside their den their ages were about 2 months old. Mark then continued onto Rinoster Koppies where a large male leopard was lying on a granite out-crop this was indeed a great sighting. The day was an enjoyable day with lots of cloud cover. The rest of the day was rather quiet as we made our way back to camp for the afternoon.

13^th December – Another cool day in Kruger with lots of cloud cover. Guests had sightings of general game before leaving at 8h45 in order to catch the shuttle back to Johannesburg. Mark will await the arrival of new guests today in Nelspruit.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 25)( Page 4 ) Our Last Hunt

It must have been at the fourth or fifth stand that Jock got through the guard at last.  The sable was badly wounded in the body and doubtless strength was failing, but there was little evidence of this yet.  In the pauses Jock's tongue shot and slithered about, a glittering red streak, but after short spells of panting, his head would shut up with a snap like a steel trap and his face set with that look of invincible resolution which it got in part from the pursed up mouth and in part from the intensity of the beady black-brown eyes: he was good for hours of this sort of work. This time the sable drove him back towards a big thorn-tree.  It may have been done without design, or it may have been done with the idea of pinning him up against the trunk.  But Jock was not to be caught that way; in a fight he took in the whole field, behind as well as in front-- as he had shown the night the second wild dog tackled him.  On his side, too, there may or may not have been design in backing towards the tree; who knows?  I thought that he scored, not by a manoeuvre, but simply because of his unrelaxing watchfulness and his resolute unhesitating courage.  He seemed to know instinctively that the jump aside, so safe with the straight-charging animals, was no game to play against the side sweep of a sable's horns, and at each charge of the enemy he had scrambled back out of range without the least pretence of taking liberties. This time the sable drove him steadily back towards the tree, but in the last step, just as the bull made his rush, Jock jumped past the tree and instead of scrambling back out of reach as before, dodged round and was in the rear of the buck before it could turn on him.  There were no flying heels to fear then, and without an instant's hesitation he fastened on one of the hind legs above the hock.  With a snort of rage and indignation the sable spun round and round, kicking and plunging wildly and making vicious sweeps with his horns; but Jock, although swung about and shaken like a rat, was out of reach and kept his grip. It was a quick and furious struggle, in which I was altogether forgotten, and as one more desperate plunge brought the bull down in a struggling kicking heap with Jock completely hidden under him, I ran up and ended the fight. It always took him some time to calm down after these tussles: he became so wound up by the excitement of the struggle that time was needed to run down again, so to say.  While I was busy on the double precaution of fixing up a scare for the aasvogels and cutting grass and branches to cover the buck, Jock moved restlessly round the sable, ever ready to pounce on him again at the least sign of life.  The slithering tongue and wide-open mouth looked like a big red gash splitting his head in two; he was so blown, his breath came and went like the puffing of a diminutive steam-engine at full speed, and his eyes with all the wickedness of fight--but none of the watchfulness--gone out of them, flickered incessantly from the buck to me: one sign from either would have been enough!  It was the same old scene, the same old performance, that I had watched scores of times; but it never grew stale or failed to draw a laugh, a word of cheer, and pat of affection; and from him there came always the same response, the friendly wagging of that stumpy tail, a splashy lick, a soft upward look, and a wider split of the mouth that was a laugh as plain as if one heard it.  But that was only an interruption--a few seconds' distraction: it did not put him off or satisfy him that all was well.  His attention went back to the buck, and the everlasting footwork went on again.  With his front to the fallen enemy and his fore legs well apart he kept ever on the move forwards and backwards, in quick steps of a few inches each, and at the same time edging round in his zigzag circle, making a track round the buck like a weather chart with the glass at `Changeable.' "Silly old fusser!  Can't you see he's finished?"  He could not hear anything, but the responsive wag showed that he knew I was talking to him; and, dodging the piece of bark I threw at him, he resumed his ridiculous round.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 24)( Page 7 ) The Last Trek

Crouching under the waggon I watched it and saw the little streamlets, dirty and debris laden, steal slowly on like sluggard snakes down to my feet, and winding round me, meet beyond and hasten on.  Soon the grass-tufts and higher spots were wet; and as the water rose on my boots and the splash beat up to my knees, it seemed worth while making for the tent of the waggon.  But in there the roar was deafening; the rain beat down with such force that it drove through the canvas-covered waggon-tent and greased buck-sail in fine mist.  In there it was black dark, the tarpaulin covering all, and I slipped out again back to my place under the waggon to watch the storm. We were on high ground which fell gently away on three sides--a long spur running down to the river between two of the numberless small watercourses scoring the flanks of the hills.  Mere gutters they were, easy corrugations in the slope from the range to the river, insignificant drains in which no water ever ran except during the heavy rains.  One would walk through scores of them with easy swinging stride and never notice their existence.  Yet, when the half-hour's storm was over and it was possible to get out and look round, they were rushing boiling torrents, twenty to thirty feet across and six to ten feet deep, foaming and plunging towards the river, red with the soil of the stripped earth, and laden with leaves, grass, sticks, and branches-- water-furies, wild and ungovernable, against which neither man nor beast could stand for a moment. When the rain ceased the air was full of the roar of waters, growing louder and nearer all the time.  I walked down the long low spur to look at the river, expecting much, and was grievously disappointed.  It was no fuller and not much changed.  On either side of me the once dry dongas emptied their soil-stained and debris-laden contents in foaming cataracts, each deepening the yellowy red of the river at its banks; but out in mid-stream the river was undisturbed, and its normal colour--the clear yellow of some ambers--was unchanged.  How small the great storm seemed then!  How puny the flooded creeks and dongas--yet each master of man and his work!  How many of them are needed to make a real flood! There are few things more deceptive than the tropical storm.  To one caught in it, all the world seems deluged and overwhelmed; yet a mile away it may be all peace and sunshine.  I looked at the river and laughed at myself!  The revelation seemed complete; it was humiliating; one felt so small.  Still, the drought was broken; the rains had come; and in spite of disappointment I stayed to watch, drawn by the scores of little things caught up and carried by--the first harvest garnered by the rains. A quarter of an hour or more may have been spent thus, when amid all the chorus of the rushing waters there stole in a duller murmur.  Murmur it was at first, but it grew steadily into a low-toned, monotoned, distant roar; and it caught and held one like the roar of coming hail or hurricane.  It was the river coming down.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 23)( Page 7 ) The Fighting Baboon

Near the Crocodile on our way down we heard from men coming up that Seedling had been there some days before but that, hearing we were on the way down and had sworn to shoot him, he had ridden on to Komati, leaving one horse behind bad with horse-sickness.  The report about shooting him was, of course, ridiculous--probably his own imagination-- but it was some comfort to know that he was in such a state of terror that his own fancies were hunting him down. At Komati we learned that he had stayed three days at the store of that Goanese murderer, Antonio--the same Antonio who on one occasion had tried to drug and hand over to the enemy two of our men who had got into trouble defending themselves against raiding natives; the same Antonio who afterwards made an ill-judged attempt to stab one Mickey O'Connor in a Barberton canteen and happily got brained with a bottle of his own doctored spirit for his pains. Antonio suspecting something wrong about a white man who came on horseback and dawdled aimlessly three days at Komati Drift, going indoors whenever a stranger appeared, wormed the secret out with liquor and sympathy; and when he had got most of Seedling's money out of him, by pretence of bribing the Portuguese officials and getting news, made a bold bid for the rest by saying that a warrant was out for him in Delagoa and he must on no account go on.  The evil-looking half-caste no doubt hoped to get the horse saddle and bridle, as well as the cash, and was quite prepared to drug Seedling when the time came, and slip him quietly into the Komati at night where the crocodiles would take care of the evidence. Antonio, however, overshot the mark; Seedling who knew all about him, took fright, saddled up and bolted up the river meaning to make for the Lebombo, near the Tembe Drift, where Bob McNab and his merry comrades ran free of Governments and were a law unto themselves.  It was no place for a nervous man, but Seedling had no choice, and he went on.  He had liquor in his saddle bags and food for several days; but he was not used to the bush, and at the end of the first day he had lost his way and was beyond the river district where the kaffirs lived. So much is believed, though not positively known; at any rate he left the last kraal in those parts about noon, and was next heard of two days later at a kraal under the Lebombo.  There he learnt that the Black Umbelusi, which it would be necessary to swim--as Snowball and Tsetse had done--lay before him, and that it was yet a great distance to Sebougwaans, and even then he would be only half-way to Bob's.  Seedling could not face it alone, and turned back for the nearest store. The natives said that before leaving the kraal he bought beer from them, but did not want food; for he looked sick; he was red and swollen in the face; and his eyes were wild; the horse was weak and also looked sick, being very thin and empty; but they showed him the footpath over the hills which would take him to Tom's--a white man's store on the road to Delagoa--and he left them!  That was Tom Barnett's at Piscene, where we always stopped; for Tom was a good friend of ours. That was how we came to meet Seedling again.  He had made a loop of a hundred and fifty miles in four days in his efforts to avoid us; but he was waiting for us when we arrived at Tom Barnett's.  We who had hurried on to catch him, believing that the vengeance of justice depended on us, forgot that it has been otherwise decreed. Tom stood in the doorway of his store as we walked up--five feet one in his boots, but every inch of it a man--with his hands resting idly on his hips and a queer smile on his face as he nodded welcome. "Did a white man come here on horseback during the last few days from the Drift?" "No!" "On foot?" "No, not the whole way." "Is he here now?"  Tom nodded. "You know about him, Tom?" "Seedling! the chap you're after, isn't it?" "Yes," we answered, lowering our voices.  Tom looked from one to the other with the same queer smile, and then making a move to let us into the store said quietly: "He won't clear, boys; he's dead!"  Some kaffirs coming along the footpath from the 'Bombo had found the horse dead of horse-sickness half a day away, and further on--only a mile or so from the store--the rider lying on his back in the sun, dying of thirst.  He died before they got him in.  He was buried under a big fig tree where another and more honoured grave was made later on. Jim sat by himself the whole evening and never spoke a word.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 20)( Page 7 ) Jantje

How much of fact there may have been in it I cannot say: honey-birds gave me many a wild goose chase, but when they led to anything at all it was to hives, and not to snakes, tigers and crocodiles.  Perhaps it is right to own up that I never cheated a honey-bird!  We pretended to laugh at the superstition, but we left some honey all the same--just for luck!  After all, as we used to say, the bird earned its share and deserved encouragement. Round the camp fire at nights it was no uncommon thing to see some one jump up and let out with whatever was handiest at some poisonous intruder.  There was always plenty of dead wood about and we piled on big branches and logs freely, and as the ends burnt to ashes in the heart of the fire we kept pushing the logs further in.  Of course, dead trees are the home of all sorts of `creepy-crawly' things, and as the log warmed up and the fire eat into the decayed heart and drove thick hot smoke through the cracks and corridors and secret places in the logs the occupants would come scuttling out at the butt ends.  Small snakes were common--the big ones usually clearing when the log was first disturbed--and they slipped away into the darkness giving hard quick glances about them; but scorpions, centipedes and all sorts of spiders were by far the most numerous. Occasionally in the mornings we found snakes under our blankets, where they had worked in during the night for the warmth of the human body; but no one was bitten, and one made a practice of getting up at once, and with one movement, so that unwelcome visitors should not be warned or provoked by any preliminary rolling.  The scorpions, centipedes and tarantulas seemed to be more objectionable; but they were quite as anxious to get away as we were, and it is wonderful how little damage is done. One night when we had been watching them coming out of a big honeycombed log like the animals from the Ark, and were commenting on the astonishing number and variety of these things, I heard Jantje conveying in high-pitched tones fanciful bits of information to the credulous waggon-boys.  When he found that we too were listenin --and Jantje had the storyteller's love for a `gallery'--he turned our way and dropped into a jargon of broken English, helped out with Hottentot-Dutch, which it is impossible to reproduce in intelligible form. He had made some allusion to `the great battle,' and when I asked for an explanation he told us the story.  It is well enough known in South Africa, and similar stories are to be found in the folklore of other countries, but it had a special interest for us in that Jantje gave it as having come to him from his own people.  He called it "The Great Battle between the Things of the Earth and the Things of the Air." For a long time there had been jealousy between the Things of the Earth and the Things of the Air, each claiming superiority for themselves; each could do something the others could not do; and each thought their powers greater and their qualities superior.  One day a number of them happened to meet on an open plain near the river's bank, and the game of brag began again as usual.  At last the Lion, who was very cross, turned to the old Black Aasvogel, as he sat half asleep on a dead tree, and challenged him. "You only eat the dead: you steal where others kill.  It is all talk with you; you will not fight!" The Aasvogel said nothing, but let his bald head and bare neck settle down between his shoulders, and closed his eyes. "He wakes up soon enough when we find him squatting above the carcase," said the Jackal.  "See him flop along then." "When _we_ find him!" the Aasvogel said, opening his eyes wide. "Sneaking prowler of the night!  Little bastard of the Striped Thief!" "Come down and fight," snarled the Hyena angrily.  "Thief and scavenger yourself!" So the Things of the Air gathered about and joined in backing the Black Aasvogel; and the Things of the Earth kept on challenging them to come down and have it out; but nobody could hear anything because the Jackal yapped incessantly and the Go'way bird, with its feathers all on end and its neck craned out, screamed itself drunk with passion. Then the Eagle spoke out: "You have talked enough.  Strike--strike for the eyes!" and he swept down close to the Lion's head, but swerving to avoid the big paw that darted out at him, he struck in passing at the Jackal, and  took off part of his ear. "I am killed!  I am killed!" screamed the Jackal, racing for a hole to hide in.  But the other beasts laughed at him; and when the Lion called them up and bade them take their places in the field for the great battle, the Jackal walked close behind him holding his head on one side and showing each one what the Eagle had done. "Where is my place?" asked the Crocodile, in a soft voice, from the bank where no one had noticed him come up. The Things of the Earth that were near him moved quietly away. "Your place is in the water," the Lion answered.  "Coward and traitor whom no one trusts!  Who would fight with his back to you?" The Crocodile laughed softly and rolled his green eyes from one to
another; and they moved still further away. "What am I?" asked the Ostrich.  "Kindred of the Birds, I am of the winged ones; yet I cannot fight with them!" "Let him fly!" said the Jackal, grinning, "and we shall then see to whom he belongs!  Fly, old Three Sticks!  Fly!" The Ostrich ran at him, waltzing and darting with wings outspread, but the Jackal dodged away under the Lion and squealed out, "Take your feet off the ground, Clumsy, and fly!" Then it was arranged that there should be two Umpires, one for each party, and that the Umpires should stand on two high hills where all could see them.  The Ostrich was made Umpire for the Things of the Air, and as long as the fight went well with his party he was to hold his head high so that the Things of the Air might see the long thin neck upright and, knowing that all was well, fight on.

A Nhongo Safaris Video Clip of Elephants Drinking

The following video clip was taken of some large elephant bulls busy enjoying the water at "Ngotso North" waterhole north of the camp "Satara".

Wildlife in Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe)

Hwange National Park (Zimbabwe) At The Ngweshia Water Hole - LIONS!