On Safari With Mark 17/18 June 2015

17 June 2015

I collected our guests in Nelspruit and headed down to Kruger. As time was limited we did a short game drive around the area finding fabulous general game: Impala, kudu, warthog, common duiker, steenbok, vervet monkeys and hippos.

18 June 2015

This was another kettle of fish - to much to report, however the highlights must be the female leopard stalking Impala literally 5m from our car. In the end she was spotted and the Impala moved off and so did she.

Following highlight was when we spotted 8 lions at a waterhole that had just caught a buffalo, while feeding on it the one massive male got up and moved around the gwari bushes and proceeded to mate with a female. In all the time in Kruger I have never seen that. Usually very little is eaten in the mating period.

Other animals: giraffe, kudu, waterbuck, Nyla's, bushbuck, steenbok, duikers, blue wildebeest, zebra, warthog, spotted hyena, elephant, rhinos, a herd of 600 buffalo, mating honey badgers, mating Kori bustards.

Fantastic trip so far.

Unusual Lion Behavior (With 2 Sets of Roaring) - 14 January 2013 - Lates...

Cats Of The Kruger National Park

Cheetah's Walking In The Road

Male Lion Being Chased By Baffalo

Baby Leopard



 

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 24)( Page 3 ) The Last Trek

He was only the first to go; day by day others followed.  Some were only cattle: others were old friends and comrades on many a trek.  The two big after-oxen Achmoed and Bakir went down early; the Komati Drift had over-tried them, and the weight and jolting of the heavy disselboom on the bad roads finished them off.  These were the two inseparables who worked and grazed, walked and slept, side by side--never more than a few yards apart day or night since the day they became yoke-fellows.  They died on consecutive days. But the living wonder of that last trek was still old Zwaartland the front ox!  With his steady sober air, perfect understanding of his work, and firm clean buck-like tread, he still led the front span.  Before we reached the Crocodile his mate gave in--worn to death by the ebbing of his own strength and by the steady indomitable courage of his comrade. Old Zwaartland pulled on; but my heart sank as I looked at him and noted the slightly `staring' coat, the falling flanks, the tread less sure and brisk, and a look in his eyes that made me think he knew what was coming but would do his best. The gallant-hearted old fellow held on.  One after another we tried with him in the lead, half a dozen or more; but he wore them all down.  In the dongas and spruits, where the crossings were often very bad and steep, the waggons would stick for hours, and the wear and strain on the exhausted cattle was killing: it was bad enough for the man who drove them.  To see old Zwaartland then holding his ground, never for one moment turning or wavering while the others backed jibbed and swayed and dragged him staggering backwards, made one's heart ache.  The end was sure: flesh and blood will not last for ever; the stoutest heart can be broken. The worst of it was that with all the work and strain we accomplished less than we used to do before in a quarter of the time.  Distances formerly covered in one trek took three, four, and even five now. Water, never too plentiful in certain parts, was sadly diminished by the drought, and it sometimes took us three or even four treks to get from water to water.  Thus we had at times to drive the oxen back to the last place or on to the next one for their drinks, and by the time the poor beasts got back to the waggons to begin their trek they had done nearly as much as they were able to do. And trouble begot trouble, as usual!  Sam the respectable, who had drawn all his pay in Delagoa, gave up after one hard day and deserted me.  He said that the hand of the Lord had smitten me and mine, and great misfortune would come to all; so he left in the dark at Crocodile Drift, taking one of the leaders with him, and joined some waggons making for Lydenburg.  The work was too hard for him; it was late in the season; he feared the rains and fever; and he had no pluck or loyalty, and cared for no one but himself. I was left with three leaders and two drivers to manage four waggons. It was Jim who told me of Sam's desertion.  He had the cross, defiant, pre-occupied look of old; but there was also something of satisfaction in his air as he walked up to me and stood to deliver the great vindication of his own unerring judgment: "Sam has deserted you and taken his voorlooper."  He jerked the words out at me, speaking in Zulu.

Jock Of The Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (Chapter 20)( Page 4 ) Jantje

One day I was watching the ants as they travelled along their route-- sometimes stopping to hobnob with those they met, sometimes hurrying past, and sometimes turning as though  sent back on a message or reminded of something forgotten--when a little dry brown bean lying in a spot of sunlight gave a jump of an inch or two.  At first it seemed that I must have unknowingly moved some twig or grass stem that flicked it; but as I watched it there was another vigorous jump.  I took it up and examined it but there was nothing unusual about it, it was just a common light brown bean with no peculiarities or marks; it was a real puzzle, a most surprising and ridiculous one.  I found half a dozen more in the same place; but it was some days before we discovered the secret.  Domiciled in each of them was a very small but very energetic worm, with a trap-door or stopper on his one end, so artfully contrived that it was almost impossible with the naked eye to locate the spot where the hole was.  The worm objected to too much heat and if the beans were placed in the sun or near the fire the weird astonishing jumping would commence. The beans were good for jumping for several months, and once in Delagoa, one of our party put some on a plate in the sun beside a fellow who had been doing himself too well for some time previously: he had become a perfect nuisance to us and we could not get rid of him.  He had a mouth full of bread, and a mug of coffee on the way to help it down, when the first bean jumped.  He gave a sort of peck, blinked several times to clear his eyes, and then with his left hand pulled slightly at his collar, as though to ease it.  Then came another jump, and his mouth opened slowly and his eyes got big.  The plate being hollow and glazed was not a fair field for the jumpers--they could not escape; and in about half a minute eight or ten beans were having a rough and tumble. With a white scared face our guest slowly lowered his mug, screened his eyes with the other hand, and after fighting down the mouthful of bread, got up and walked off without a word. We tried to smother our laughter, but some one's choking made him look back and he saw the whole lot of us in various stages of convulsions. He made one rude remark, and went on; but every one he met that day made some allusion to beans, and he took the Durban steamer next morning. The insect life was prodigious in its numbers and variety; and the birds, the beasts, and the reptiles were all interesting.  There is a goodness-knows-what-will-turn-up-next atmosphere about the Bushveld which is, I fancy, unique.  The story of the curate, armed with a butterfly net, coming face to face with a black-maned lion may or may not be true--in fact; but it is true enough as an illustration; and it is no more absurd or unlikely than the meeting at five yards of a lioness and a fever-stricken lad carrying a white green-lined umbrella-- which is true!  The boy stood and looked: the lioness did the same. "She seemed to think I was not worth eating, so she walked off," he used to say--and he was Trooper 242 of the Imperial Light Horse who went back under fire for wounded comrades and was killed as he brought the last one out. I had an old cross-bred Hottentot-Bushman boy once--one could not tell which lot he favoured--who was full of the folklore stories and superstitions of his strange and dying race, which he half humorously and half seriously blended with his own knowledge and hunting experiences.  Jantje had the ugly wrinkled dry-leather face of his breed, with hollow cheeks, high cheek-bones, and little pinched eyes, so small and so deeply set that no one ever saw the colour of them; the peppe  corns of tight wiry wool that did duty for hair were sparsely scattered over his head like the stunted bushes in the desert; and his face and head were seamed with scars too numerous to count, the souvenirs of his drunken brawls.  He resembled a tame monkey rather than ahuman creature, being, like so many of his kind without the moral side or qualities of human nature which go to mark the distinction between man and monkey.  He was normally most cheery and obliging; but it meant nothing, for in a moment the monkey would peep out, vicious, treacherous and unrestrained.  Honesty, sobriety, gratitude, truth, fidelity, and humanity were impossible to him: it seemed as if even the germs were not there to cultivate, and the material with which to work did not exist. He had certain make-believe substitutes, which had in a sense been grafted on to his nature, and appeared to work, while there was no real use for them; they made a show, until they were tested; one took them for granted, as long as they were not disproved: it was a skin graft only, and there seemed to be no real `union' possible between them and the tough alien stock.  He differed in character and nature from the Zulu as much as he did from the white man; he was as void of principle as- well, as his next of kin, the monkey; yet, while without either shame of, or contempt for, cowardice; he was wholly without fear of physical danger, having a sort of fatalist's indifference to it; and that was something to set off against his moral deficit.  I put Jantje on to wash clothes the day he turned up at the waggons to look for work, and as he knelt on the  ocks stripped to the waist I noticed a very curious knotted line running up his right side from the lowest rib into the armpit.  The line was whiter than his yellow skin; over each rib there was a knot or widening in the line; and under the arm there was a big splotchy star--all markings of some curious wound.

Some photos taken while on safari in the Kruger National Park

Some  of the above photos ere taken while on safari with Evelyne on the road btween Skukuza and Lower Sabie in the Kruger National Park.