BootsnAll Travel Blogs

February 2010
with only 18 more miles on the clock of the bike (crappy weather for months now) Ive finally got a permit to reside in Boswana
…so 9th Feb, I’m offski
arrive Joburg and transported up to Tuli YAY!!!
Stuart left on a much needed holiday the next day, so all alone in the wonderworld that is Tuli Wilderness! …apart from the students that is,….
One day later and we see the first leopard of the year – just a fleeting glimpse, but hey! …thats kewl
A week later and I need to take the students that are leaving down to Polokwane (Pietersburg) for a transfer and to pick up Stuart on the way back. All was good till we got back into the Tuli area and were driving thu VERY heavy rain…..we’d had to stop a couple of times for the water running across the road to subside a little, but then as crossed another ‘river’ Stuart drove too far to the left and the whole front of the 80 series Cruiser dipped under water in a huge hole!!!! …luckily it powered thru and came out the other side!!!….the water had ran over the bonnet it was so deep!

March saw us find two carcasses on the same day: one was a zebra that appeared to have been killed by a leopard (very strange)

the other was an actual LEOPARD carcass!! ..quite rotten so not able to tell what had happened to it, but it was also collared and therefore one of the Mashatu known animals (the collar had failed some time previously, so we still were no closer to finding out the story)
4 days later and we have BUFFALO in the area! …this shouldn’t happen as the area is protected against bovine diseases which many buffs carry, but these two we came across on a night drive, had escaped from somewhere in Zim. We kept quiet about it, but Chris saw tracks, reported it and the animals were both sadly shot a few days later (not on our property)
Later in March we were on a night drive, just myself and two students, when we picked up the lions. Followed them for a while, then sat in the dark with engine and lights off as Sebatana appeared to be stalking a group of Wildebeest we knew were just to one side of us. Minutes later and the Gnu’s started grunting and then stampeded right in front of us! ..we put the spotlight on them and lo and behold, there was Sebby RIGHT in the middle of the herd!… she pulled down a Gnu right in front of us and then struggled to hold on as the two spun round and round in a death battle, then just as the Gnu broke free, ANOTHER one ran in and collided with the first, they both then scattered, whilst Sebby stood apparently stunned by the goings on! As we flashed the spotlight around, we could see the rest of the herd had returned and were formed up in a semi-circle as if they were going to attack the lion too! …crazy goings on and ALL video’d!!! http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1329112100970

April saw the Wild Dogs make an appearance on Mohave highway, right next to the road. WE left them until that afternon and then caught up with them again (more or less the same place) and waited until they started moving…we followed them along the road until they stopped at their morning kill – a Kudu – which they all tucked into again. All within 3m of the vehicle …and a slightly scarey moment for Paddy on the tracker seat as one of the dogs appeared to be able to se e him and got ‘interested’ I talked to it and dissuaded it from getting any more interested!

I managed to get 7 days leave in April, so drove down to the Lowveld area, staying at Hoedspruit, Graskop (spending some time in the Bikers Rest bar) and Sabie. All good except the weather was terrible with heavy rain. Though there are some fab sights in that area (Gods Window, Wonder View and the many waterfalls of the area

Back in Tuli and the news is: Mabella, our HUGE lioness has had cubs!! ..there appears to be tracks of at least 2 and possibly 3 cubs, but the bad news is that she is now INCREDIBLY aggressive! Attacking the car at every opportunity.

May was a quiet month for students….so quiet that we actually shut up shop for the month and concentrated on much needed car maintenance…. and I started demolishing walls inside my new house, just around the corner from mohave camp – its an old house from the cattle post days, with a thatched roof – story goes that the last inhabitant was killed by an ellie!
I also got away to Joburg for a couple of days to watch the WSB round at Kyalami -free ticket courtesy of KFB of the mcnninjas (ta, everso) great racing and a nice track …man, I love the sound of an in-line 4 bike engine…..wish my bike was here…..

June saw the arrival of our new co-ordinator Massi. Italian South African guy, with great experience and a nice guy to boot! It also saw the arrival fo a hippo to our coffee spot below the Sycamore Figs, on the banks of the Limpopo: we were having coffee and idling about, when a ripple appeared on the water and then a hippo surfaced a few metres from the bank – and us – snorted then trotted off down river! …LUSH! The month also gave us views of the lions (not the cub tho) and one Eland carcass was heavily populated with lions, leopards and both spotty and brown hyaena! – tho not all at the same time.
Ju e was also the start of my summer break: I used the trusty (sic) 2.4lHilux to drive up to Nata and stay at the Nata Lodge where I stayed a night before driving up to Hunters Road – an historic road used for centuries by hunters: it winds its way up north along the Bots/Zim border. I drove thick sand for 40km to get to it, but was rewarded by seeing a leopard jump out of a tree within 5 minutes of getting on the road! After that I saw plenty of ellies and giraffe, zebra and Kudu etc. before winding my way back to the Elephant Sands campsite, where after towing a couple of people int the camp, I was given free tent, beer and food for the night! ..CHEERS!
The next day I realised that the local ellie population use the camp swimming pool for drinking water, with incredibly close meetings with family groups of ellies all day! …got some great photos there…so I stayed an extra night! <img src="” alt=”ellie” />
Next night was full moon and just by chance I had intended to drive down the Makgadikgadi pans to Lekhubu island…so I did. Paid to stay on the island surrounded by Baobab trees and star chestnuts, set up the tent and then went for a walk down onto the pan. Was a beautiful place spoilt by a number of peeps and their Cruisers/Prado’s/Fortuners doughnutting in the salt. But finally, the sun set and the beautiful full moon slowly rose above the salt desert. Incredible sight.
Next morning I was up early and set off walking across the pans! ….though I had plenty of water and a GPS, I walked without drinking and trying to use the sun (and he occasional pelican egg!) to keep a direction. It worked pretty well, but after I’d walked 11km, and passed a couple of skeletons (one deffo a zebra, the other I think was a pelican) and then coming across fresh hyaena tracks, I decided that was enough and headed back…deciding that it would be kinda nice to run, I upped pace until I was doing a canny jog along the . Arrived perfectly safely some time later and sat under a Baobab tree to drink and recover from the intense heat. Fabulous day!
Next day I drove North to Gweta and Planet Baobab where I stayed for the night and watched England lose in the World Cup… Off to the Nxai pans the next day which were canny, but accessed by a nightmare of a rutted, corrugated sand road. Nice to see Baines Baobabs there though. I then carried on to Maun and a flight over the Okavango Delta in a little Cessna thingee with some overlanders…expensive but apparently the Delta as more water in it now than its EVER had! Incredible views and quite a lot of animals down there too! I stayed at Audi Camp for the night, where I had a couple of beers with the manageress. Next day, I sorted accommodation at 3rd Bridge camp site in Moremi (Okavango Delta) and then arranged my park entrance accordingly – the camp site only had space for 2 nights but they assured me there would probably be space for a third and I could amend my park entrance there with them. Off I trotted (in the car) and diverted north to Xakanaxa, to avoid the washed out road thru 2nd bridge, from there you head down over 4th bridge to get to 3rd bridge ..HOWEVER, I arrived at 4th Bridge just in time to see another hilux submerge down to its windows as it crossed the ‘bridge’. The guy offered to wait this side and make sure I got across, which I did, but again, the water was flowing across the bonnet as I went thru!. A fairly uneventful but nice stay at 3rd bridge without any predators but with lots of ellies and various antelope and my first sight of a hippo out of the water – it trotted across the grass in front of me on its way to the water early the 2nd morning. I also spent one of the most pleasant 4 hours of my life, sitting surrounded by a group of giraffe, whilst completing Evening Telegraph cryptic crosswords.
The day I left, I drove down thru 2nd bridge as the water had subsided: turned into a good decision as I came across an old male lion that had obviously just eaten. It sat watching me for a few minutes and then stood up walked a little towards me and then turned sideways and ROARED! …delicious!
On my return to Tuli, the thatchers Magazine and Sox arrived and started the rethatch of my new house . At about the same time, the cylinder head gasket failed in the Hilux (that I’d just been on leave in) so I had to remove that, Stuart got the head welded up and machined flat again the water galleries had corroded) and refitted it OK ….just more mechanical woes to add to the usual long list! (and a bit of an argument with Stuart over blame…)
The next month or so was a whirlwind of lion spotting, wild dogs, Eagle Rock walks and fab game drives as we carried on with the conservation work and got MAssi up to speed with the area, sights and roads and how we actually undertake the conservation work.
August came and with it was 2 weeks of leave: I flew back to the UK to meet an old friend…..Shaun who emigrated out to Oz when we were 20 (I think) and who I havent seen since. Was fab to meet up with him and his lovely wife Maria. We had a few drinks in the County hotel for old times sake on the first night, along with Stu and David Meikle and Lesley (from the old party days) and her fella Brian. After that we had days at the Metro Centre, Durham and Holy Island and at least one night at Lesleys. Was sad to see them go home, but I’ll meet them again, soon – hopefully IN Oz !
September onwards: and back in Tuli – with FAMILY!! …Big and little Michael Gilmore (my brother in law and his son – my nephew) arrived for 2 weeks. Great to have family over to see the place – and despite not seeing any lions while they were here, we had great views of a Brown Hyaena (Hyaena brunnea) eating an impala carcass one night (with little Michael on the tracker seat) lots of ellies, a few Solifugids….. and managed a few walks to Eagle rock etc.
We also played with ellie poo in the Mohave river and watched little guy skin his knees on the rope swing 😉 free time was mostly spent playing Uno with our Spanish/Belgian student and her german friend.
The camp boma was also being rethatched by Sox and Magazine, prior to the rainy season, so the kitchen and table were repositioned under a canopy in the ‘car park’. It made the place very rustic (even more than usual) but also kinda nice and ‘colonial expedition’ stylee.
Despite not getting much time with the Michaels, they both managed to get a shot at driving he Landie – and both did very well too.
We didnt have many students during the rethatch (which was prolly a good thing) but those we had were a pleasure! …Michael (the gadget man) and his lovely wife Emily were here for 2 weeks and though there were no predators around, we were elated to find a very young giraffe one morning in a drainage line, with is mum watching us from above. Sadly, we found its carcass the next morning in the same drainage line 🙁 We thought it had died from leopard attack (there were puncture marks on its neck and a trail of blood from its mouth) however when Michael checked his photos from the previous day, there was blood from its mouth then too. We camped out to see if any scavengers would come to it overnight, but despite checking early in the night and again much later, nothing was seen…..and the next day the carcass had completely disappeared! …annoyingly.
We also had out first Isreali student: a girl called Shir. Despite being a veggie 😉 she turned out to be a really nice girl – very interested in the whole conservation experience and pretty knowledgable about the animals/ecology too – summat to do with her uni studies, no doubt. Anyhoo, THE most remarkable thing about Shir was…….. her cake making skills! ….YAY! Fantastic cakes in the bush! Together with Claudia (a swiss lady) we walked a whole lot of the area and had a lot of laughs doing it – well done Claudia!
Yet another girl arrived late in the year: ‘Stig’ ….an Ozzie girl. At this stage there were only the 3 of us: Shir, Stig and myself so we had a lot of work to do to keep the data records going! …we also had a lorra laughs as we drove and walked around the place. INCLUDING one drive thru the central area with the girls singing as I drove the Cruiser….just as I manouvered thru a narrow and deep drainage line and with the girls singing loudly, I realised that Sebatana was standing looking at us just 20m or so in front! …..obviously amazed at the singing, she eventually waltzed off into the bush.
Even more incredibly was the next realisation: STIG MAKES CAKES TOO!!!!!! can my life get any better than this??
Now it was time for my next leave – so I left at the same time as Shir and hired a car to drive down to SA. I spent time a night in Polokwane and a day eating lemon meringue and drinking cappuccino (how else am I gonna spend my hols???) then drove down to Hoedspruit and a night in ‘Trackers’ accommodation up on the mountains there. Next day was into Kruger via Orpen gate, where I saw plenty of Buffalo, giraffe and hippos and got fined R500 for speeding!!! (embarrassingly) Next was down to Hazyview via the ‘Panoramic’ route and a night at Perrys Bridge Hollow …a very nice hotel place with a lush room and great eggs benedict for brekky – they even have staff that knock at your door at 7pm with a ‘goodnight’ card, a biscuit for your bedtime drink and a copy of the next days weather forecast! …now THATS service!
Swaziland!
`I drove thru the Reef border post and stayed the first night at Phophonyane Waterfall Ecolodge, followed by a drive down to Maguga Dam where I stayed for another night and walked to some San rock paintings with the local guide, who I shared melon with when we got back to the car.
Next day and back into SA with a drive thru Carolina and Dullstroom before arriving at Graskop and staying at the Blue Swallow – nice place and quite cheap. Of course I had to have beers at the Bikers Rest bar that night 😉 photo opportunity at Berlin falls, then on to Sabie before returning to Graskop for the night. My next day was a drive north stopping at Bourkes Luck potholes before returning to Hoedspruit for the night. I had a day at the Blyderiverspoort dam which was very nice and relaxing and nice salad and coffee at the Eden garden, which was a lovely place to sit – next to a banana plantation and gorgeous gardens. That night I drank at the Sportsmans bar where I got chatted up by the OLD `barmaid (she was nice though)
After that it was back to the wonderworld that is Tuli.
….and only 2 students! …Stig was still there, and she had been joined by an american south african guy called Rodney (hereinafter renamed Rodders) Well, we had a lorra fun for a few days on the conservation project proper, but then we joined in as Mentors on the Limpopo Valley Children in the Wilderness charity event on the property.it meant early starts (5am) and late finishes, but we had a great time playing games with the local kids from Lentswe le Moriti and Motlhabaneng villages. Was great to see them warm to us and the event and eventually have a great time. Lots of fun!
Once the CitW event ended, it was back to packing up for Christmas and a Christmas party with much dancing and drinking
And then ……. it was time for me to leave Tuli. Very sad, but it seems to be my only real choice at the moment. Hopefully I’ll be back 🙁