Day 26 – Letaba to Satara
Day 26 – March 20
See pics here
AM Drive
Left Letaba rest camp at 5:30am, and are driving to Satara rest camp to spend the night. We took another route south, driving through Olifants again to get gasoline (petrol if you are south African!!). We passed the hyena den, and saw the parents and pups again. We then saw a herd of at least 100 buffalo crossing the road. This was pretty unnerving driving through these guys – we had to wait for a bit until there was a bit of a gap where we could begin to make our way through. Once we started through they waited for us (luckily) to pass before continuing on their passage. By 6:30am, we had also seen elephant, kudus and waterbuck – in total more than we had seen all day yesterday on our morning and afternoon drives!
When we stopped at Olifants for petrol, we got a bit of a surprise. The attendant said our Mastercard did not work in his machine, and that we would have to pay cash. We had not planned on using cash for this, and only had enough money on hand to get us through the rest of our days for small stuff – such as snacks, gifts and miscellaneous stuff. Jim explained to the attendant that we had used our card at every other petrol station in the park, and it worked. The attendant did not speak English well at all, so this did not help matters. By this point, Kristin had gotten out of the car to see what was going on. She grabbed receipts to show him that indeed we had used our card at other stations, and it worked just fine. It appeared that the attendant did not know how to use the card – he was swiping it incorrectly, and did not know how to insert the card such that we could use our PIN number. Kristin took the card, inserted it into the machine and continued the transaction for him. He was flustered, and probably thought we were trying to rip him off, but we showed him the receipt and showed him that it looked exactly like the ones that we had done at other stations. He wrote down our licence plate number (not that this would have helped his cause), and we told him we were staying at Satara if he needed to track us down. We learned that he was just filling in for someone who was away this morning We told him now he would know how to do it for the next person! Funny, we’ve noticed that the ‘south African way’ reminds us somewhat of when we were in Fiji or Samoa on ‘island time’. It gets done when it gets done, which is often slowly, and not the way you would normally do it. Keeps life interesting!
On our way to the next camp, we had a large elephant on the side of the road trumpet at us on the way by. Not a happy ‘hello, how are you’ trumpet, but rather a ‘get the heck away’ kind of trumpet. Luckily, no confrontation, and we moved along abruptly.
Right around the corner from Satara, we stopped alongside the road where numerous vehicles had stopped. We were told that there were lions way back in the bush. We were able to see the ears of one, but that was it. We moved on, just up the road to the river where we stopped for quite some time to watch a herd of elephants come from the bush to play in the water. There were elephants from all ages in the herd – the older ones showed the babies how to walk into the water, bathe and play. There were three males who were play fighting in the water, although at one point it looked like the ‘play’ had ceased, and they were going for blood. Very interesting to watch. We think we captured some of it on video.
We checked in at Satara for some lunch at the restaurant. There are a lot of people here – much different than the more northerly parks where at times we had it all to ourselves. Jim ordered the same meal he had in Mopani; Kristin ordered grilled veggies on a pita. Jim’s meal came and it was nothing like he had ordered – we were not surprised. He pointed to what he ordered and the waiter took it back and returned with a bit more of what it should have been, but still not correct – Jim ate it anyways. Kristin’s lunch was terrible – it was frozen veggies that had been boiled and put on bread. There was no point in questioning it, as she would have gotten blank stares. It is amazing that the food is so different in southern parks as compared to the northern ones. We noticed later that in the reception area of this park, they have monthly ratings posted for each sector of the camp. For example, ratings on reception, restaurant, gift shop, rooms, etc. The reception scored high this month (in the 80% mark) and had hovered around this mark for many months; the restaurant was sitting at 52%, and had hovered here (and lower) for many months. The results were based on surveys done by customers. Somewhat embarrassing, but no one seemed overly concerned about it as it did not appear that the problems were being worked out.
Afternoon and Evening Drives
Our afternoon drive was good – all the usual suspects, plus a couple of jackals. Nice! We decided to take another night drive with Kruger park. This one started a bit later – 8pm. Jim once again sat where he could be a spotter. We saw both small and large genet. However, the highlight of the evening was a pride of lions hanging out on the road. Wow. We were so close, and they did not mind us being there at all. There were young lions, playing while their moms kept an eye on them. Two large males were present too, one of which walked right up to the truck, paused, and then passed it. It appeared they were all headed towards another lion they heard calling in the distance. We saw the cubs again later, however alone, as their moms had gone out hunting. It was funny to see how the older cubs looked after the smaller cubs, keeping them in line by trying to pick them up by the scruff of their necks as they had seen their moms do before. Well that drive was certainly worth it!
Kristin
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