Last Day, Thanksgiving Day

November 26

Thanksgiving Day

1330

It’s Thursday afternoon, Thanksgiving Day. I’m sitting out on the spacious deck/dinning area at Orpen Camp, spending our last day here where we spent our first.  It’s breezy and I reckon about 100F. A starling of some sort is squawking about something and I can see a troop of baboons moving along the camp fence line.  And, as I write this, I just heard a young elephant complaining about something. My pale, white-skinned neighbors two bungalows down are sweltering red-faced on their deck and pointing a hand-held fan at each other.  One of the things about spending a few weeks in the bush is that you become reacquainted with some simple pleasures that you’ve forgotten about in the complexity of life back home.  I’m enjoying a ginger ale, with ice very much.  Last night, we ate pork chops, fried potatoes and cream corn.  Seriously, cream corn. And it was awesome.

Now a family group of elephants has moved into the water hole just beyond the fence line. Moms and young ones and I can see a little baby. It’s hot and dry here and they have to drink every day.

Yesterday morning we left Letaba with heavy hearts as we near the end of this trip.  Letaba is such a beautiful camp.  It’s not the most popular camp, due I think primarily to its location, but it’s a lovely spot and we’ve enjoyed good success there.  We drove south without much to see, had a pizza for breakfast at Satara (all the rules go out the window here – and, it was great!).  Shortly after leaving Satara to continue our journey, a driver in an oncoming vehicle flagged us to a stop and asked if we’d seen lions yet, because there was a group of three lions on the S12, about 250 meters off the paved road that we were on.  We headed over there to find only an older lady in her black BMW sitting on this unpaved road in southern Africa, watching sleeping lions tangled up in the bush. 

It didn’t take too long to figure out what was up – there was a female in estrus and a male who she was mating with.  And, the third wheel – another female who seemed close to the mating female.  They both appeared young so maybe a sister or cousin.  It was already a very hot morning but they relocated in a shady spot quite close to us on the road. We noticed that the female in heat had two very nasty gashes on her left-rear leg.  The male mounted her a couple of times but neither party seemed too energetic, both because of the heat and because I assume her leg was really hurting. 

The dynamics began to emerge, as it seemed to be the case that the male was not welcoming the female who wasn’t in season.  He seemed to quietly snarl at her and his body language indicated his displeasure.  This erupted into a mild squabble with snarling and batting then he forced himself to lie right between the two females in the small patch of shade.  It’s like if you’ve ever had a cat or dog force themselves into the space between you and your spouse. All the while he made quiet sort of growling/rumbling noises.

We were very close, maybe 10 meters from the lions, and I had the 600 on shooting very tight shots of lion faces and suddenly all hell broke loose with lions roaring and fighting and the young female on her back being pounded by the male.  I got no shot because, a) I was shooting too tight, and b) because it startled the living hell out of me. It was all I could do to not drop the lens out of the car window.  It was like having a bomb go off next to you.  In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.  Part of what makes lions so fascinating is that there’s this contradiction in their basic make-up.  They’re really the only social cats and there is a great amount of bonding and affection apparent between socially related lions.  They’re constantly rubbing up against each other and grooming and often sleep in contact with each other.  But there’s also an undercurrent of violence just beneath the surface.  Sometimes it’s predictable – around feeding, or during mating – and sometimes it seems to come from nowhere.  But I should have realized that the male’s quiet expressions of displeasure with the unwanted ‘friend’ would eventually erupt.

After the fight, the female in heat relocated to another shady spot.  The male followed her though I noticed that she was careful to position herself where it would not be easy for him to mount her.  The young, unwanted friend stayed right where she was.  When you watch a lot of lions, you started deciding that some lions are just prettier than others, and she is a very pretty lion.  She also seemed a lot more curious and engaged than the other two.  She was alert and awake while they were panting in the shade, and she watched us, she watched the birds, she watched insects – she was much more engaged in her surroundings.  And I admired her because she didn’t give an inch when she was attacked and she held her ground while the others got up to leave.  She just sat there for a while, appearing to be totally unbothered by what just happened. But eventually she stood up, turned away and slowly walked off into the bush alone.

We considered ourselves lucky and left the lions to themselves, heading to Orpen to check in and then to take a short drive before the gate closed for the evening.  During the afternoon, it looked like thunderstorms were building to the west and during our drive the weather changed dramatically, with very strong, gusty winds, lightening and dropping temperatures. 

Overnight, more lightening, thunder and rain.

Our intention was to get up and hit the road as the gate opened but in reality we took it more leisurely and didn’t get out the gate until about 0500, just as the sun was coming up.  We saw two hyena, jackals, warthog and then up ahead we saw some cars stopped and then we saw a large number of figures running to and fro – we’d found the wild dogs.  We’d guess that this pack has about 20 – 25 members, about half being pups. The light was beautiful, but it was challenging to shoot because they never stop for an instant and we were shooting around all of the other cars stopped there.  The dogs then decided to start moving and everyone fell into line to follow them as they took one of the unpaved roads heading south.  We were in the middle of the pack of about 12 cars and we quickly decided that this wasn’t for us.  We were thankful that we got to experience the sighting and the cost/benefit equation of trying to follow these fast moving dogs in a pack of a dozen cars just didn’t work out. 

We headed back to where the lions were, and  sure enough, about a half kilometer farther north, I glimpsed the male’s back while he was in the act of mating.  There were in an area of tall grass and if he hadn’t actually been mating at that moment, we’d have never found him.  We watched for a bit, fired a few frames, but they were pretty far in there and often obscured.  So, we left, went to Satara, ate breakfast, stopped by briefly to see them again on the way home, saw a nice big bull rhino as we continued our trip to Orpen and then got here a couple of hours ago.

Our time here is about done now.  We’ll take a drive this evening though I’m expecting thunderstorms again tonight.  And then, if we can, we’ll braai up a steak for Thanksgiving dinner. We’ll pack up and be ready to leave tomorrow morning early.  We’ll probably take a last short drive in the morning – no cameras, just to enjoy coolness of the morning and the smell of the bush and the sounds of the birds as the begin their days. Then the drive to Jo’burg, coordinating returning the lens, hanging out at the airport, the forever flight to Atlanta, the mad rush to retrieve luggage, recheck luggage, go back through security and catch a flight to Salt Lake, then the very short layover in SLC and then finally home.

It’s hard not to be sad.  I’m sure you can stay long enough that the pull of home overcomes the pull of this place of beauty and adventure, but I’m not there yet and I don’t think Gina is either.  It doesn’t help that we hear that there’s been a big dump of snow, meaning that we now begin that long, cold and dark winter.  I’ve lived in Bend for most of the last 18 years.  There are things I like about it certainly.  It’s pretty.  I’m fortunate to have a good job, working with smart, caring people.  My friends are there.  But I’ve never really learned to love the climate and winter, and the days of going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark, makes my stomach knot.

But for tonight, I’m hanging on to all that we have to be thankful for.  This is I think the 6^th time in the last 7 years that I’ve spent Thanksgiving Day in the bush.  Now that is something to be truly thankful for.

Mind if I squeeze in here?  Apparently, yes.

A Very Pretty Lioness

Wild Dog Pups At Play

Ms. Leopard Makes An Appearance. And, She's Hot!

November 24

1210

Sitting in the screened in kitchen/dining area of our bungalow at Letaba.  Letaba is a beautiful camp, situated in a park-like setting on a bluff overlooking the nearly dry Letaba River.  It’s mid-day and warming up outside.  Crystal clear with a pleasant breeze blowing through here.  Gina’s taking a nap.  I’m writing when I should be snoozing.

A lot’s happened.  On the 22^nd, took a morning bush walk out of Olifants.  It was very warm and humid and still.  During the walk, we saw clouds building up to the east, and then lightening.  The rangers seemed to hurry the walk along, anxious not to get caught out in the rain.  We did in fact get a shower during the day, but only a brief one.

That evening though, we had a major electrical storm and then heavy winds and rain. Some wind damage in the area. We woke up and it was cloudy, cooler but still very windy.  We took a long drive without seeing a lot though we were able to spend quite a bit of time watching a hyena cub with its mother.  There’s something uplifting about watching any young being play for the pure joy of it and we spent quite a bit of time watching this little guy.  Not great photography, just fun.

A long drive followed, without seeing much.  We found a lot of vultures at the Bangu water hole, where we’d seen the four male lions a few days previously.  They were clustered in a number of trees in the area and of course you think two things – first, there’s a kill somewhere nearby and, second, whomever the perpetrator of said kill is, they’re still around.  But we looked and looked and finally gave up.  It’s a mystery we won’t solve.

Later that evening, I watched vervets raiding our neighbors and I decided that, really, they’re more like freedom fighters than bandits and now I’m on their side.  You gotta understand, these are monkeys that weigh about the same as an average house cat and every single day they’re outsmarting mostly old fat white people (okay, maybe not such a stretch for monkeys).  I was watching this one male.  Male vervets have appendages that seem way out of proportion to their size, at least to the (envious) human eye.  And, get this – they’re blue.  Literally a pale electric blue.  So I’m watching this male and he’s got major swagger going on.  And then he participates in a raid on one of my neighbors, eating her nice apples and white bread.  A plump older lady comes out and scolds the vervets in Dutch, as though they were naughty children, and he just swaggers away, displaying his contempt for all to see.  That was the moment I decided I was on their side.  They can’t have my stuff but I hope they have a long career of upsetting Dutch tourists who don’t pay any attention to the warnings about the vervets.

One more thing about vervets.  They don’t work long hours.  They work in the day until the beginnings of dusk and then they melt away, conceding the darkness to the night creatures and especially Mr. Leopard.  They don’t work late, past closing time, because they’re worried about all the stuff they have to do or because they’re so behind or because they’re trying to impress the boss or create a reputation for themselves as the selfless, devoted martyr who’s slowly killing himself for the company.  And they don’t go to work early either.  No 0630 meetings because that’s the only time the docs can meet.  None of that crap.  They get up, stretch, make love, pester each other and only when they’re good and ready do they start their job of raiding tourists.

Yesterday morning we woke up and it was very cool and clear.  I’d not slept well.  After a lifetime of bureaucratic work, I guess I’m trained to always be calculating the future and I lay there in bed thinking that I only have 4 days left and there’s so much I need to get done including this and that and blah blah blah.  Gina’s so much better at living in the moment than I am. But somehow I managed to come to the conclusion that I didn’t need to get up and rush out the gate and so Gina and I spent an extra hour packing and getting ready and then just sitting on the deck overlooking the Olifants River drinking coffee and watching the rising sun bring color to our surroundings.  It was a beautiful morning in a beautiful spot.

We dropped the key in the box and said goodbye to Olifants for this year and headed south for a long drive before turning back to the north to head to Letaba.  It was a pretty morning, starting cool and gradually warming up and, while we didn’t do any spectacular shooting, it was very pleasant.  We ended up at Satara to check tire pressures and now we find that we have a more serious leak on the left rear.  We bought some provisions, got coffee and bought some trinkets for people back home.

We headed north and had a lovely sighting of a rhino bull.  Mid-day light so not spectacular but still it was a lot of fun.  Also came to a cluster of vehicles in the road north of Satara.  We asked what they were looking at and were told that there was a leopard sleeping under the bush.  And there was, barely visible.  This area is very dry, open savannah with very little in the way of notable vegetation so it was a little strange that a leopard would end up here mid-day on a day that was becoming hot.  He was curled up under this tiny little bush, panting hard.  Almost impossible to see, so we continued on.

There’s a roadside emergency shop outside of Letaba and we stopped there to have the tire looked after.  A small puncture was identified and plugged and we were back on the road in less than an hour.  It cost $8….

We checked into Letaba and decided we’d take a short drive around the vicinity of the camp.  There’s an unpaved road just to the left as you exit the camp and it follows the course of the Letaba River. Not far down the road, it dips into what was a very low water crossing at one end of a beautiful little glade.  I’ve shot this little glade before and it’s a lovely spot, shaded and quiet. The road splits and does sort of a loop around it so that you can look into the glade from both directions. It runs basically east-west so it has lovely lighting both morning and afternoon.  We drove down in there and, while the water level was much lower than we’ve seen in the past, there’s still water there, enough to house one resident hippo.  We sat at this spot for a while and then began the steep, single lane climb out of there. 

And there, crossing the road in front of us was a leopard, headed right to left into a mopane thicket.  I stopped before getting too close to prepare the camera and to see what she’d do.  She stood on the edge of the thicket and watched me intently, appearing to prepare to bolt.  The thing with leopards is that they can move 10 meters off the road and you can’t even see them any more so I was thinking that it’s really going to be a long shot that we get anything of this girl.  My assumption is that it was going to be a brief sighting but that she’d take off as soon as I moved the car. And as I began to approach, sure enough, she moved into the thicket.  We tried to keep an eye on where she went and she went a short ways into the bush and lay day.  We crept up the road, searching to our right to see if there was any way to get a visual on her and, amazingly, there was a small tunnel through which I could see her in the bush.  We set up and began shooting her as she was brilliantly backlit and framed by mopanes. She appeared to be a young female and was really suffering in the heat.  After a few moments, she got up and began to slink deeper into the bush, heading downhill.  Her body language suggested that she was stalking with her body held low to the ground and shoulder blades sticking way up out of her back.

I put the car in neutral and rolled back down the hill while Gina tried as hard as she could to keep a visual on the cat.  It finally stopped into the bush where Gina could barely see her, and then Gina saw the scrub hare in a small opening.  The hare was on high alert, standing on its two hind legs, obviously aware that something was up.  The leopard was barely visible just on the other side of the hare.  I didn’t have a clear shot at the hare but tried to stay focused on it, just in case Ms. Leopard decided to hit it.  But in the end, the rabbit bolted and our leopard turned and headed deeper into the bush and out of our sight.

Sometimes you struggle so hard and sometimes you get so lucky.  I’ve had beautiful leopard sightings at Kruger but I’ve also spent days and days where almost nothing happened.  Last time we were here, we were in the park for almost three weeks and saw our first leopard on the last afternoon.  We’d seen two leopards previously on this trip, but just fleeting glimpses, nothing we could photograph at all.  And so this sighting was a gift on a beautiful late spring afternoon in a beautiful place and it was all our own.  That’s just how it goes here.  Sometimes it’s given to you, and Gina and I both felt so grateful and happy that we got to experience it.  We came home, cooked a steak, potatoes and sweet corn on an open fire and drank two Castle Lagers to celebrate our success.

This morning, we got up to take the final bush walk of our trip here.  It was just Gina and I and the two rangers.  It was a beautiful morning and we were driven to a lovely location in mopane woodlands.  Ranger John was especially interested in birds and so we spent much of the walk learning about birds.  It was I think about 6km and fairly hard walking though it didn’t seem to wind them much.  By the end of the walk, it was already very warm. 

Breakfast, and then we took the car to the ‘car wash’ in the camp where Alec did an amazing job of cleaning the car.  You understand that we’ve spent two weeks driving on dusty gravel roads with windows open. We couldn’t bring the car back to Hertz in that condition.  Now it’s clean enough.  And, yes, we’ll drive it for a couple more days and, yes, it’ll be dirty when we return the car, but appropriately dirty for a three-week rental.

It’s winding down now, but we’re excited to do a drive this evening and will be especially watchful in case Ms. Leopard gives us another opportunity.

Gina's clarification of the day.... "Every bad smell you smell doesn't necessarily have to do with me."

Mr. Rhino

Ms. Leopard

Olifants Saturday

November 21

1400

Sitting in the outdoor dining area of our bungalow at Olifants Camp.  Olifants is a beautiful camp, built high on a bluff overlooking the Olifants River.  We were lucky enough to book a riverside unit for three nights and we have a lovely view of a bend in the Olifants, looking far to the south.

The Olifants has water, but it’s running very low.  Like everything else in the park, this area is extremely dry.  Many animals are suffering, especially animals like impala that are dependent primarily on grass.  A very hard time for them and they seem to be losing condition by the day as their ribs and pelvises become more obvious.  Kruger runs in cycles of wet and dry in 10 or 12-year periods and it looks like it’s just beginning a new dry cycle.  Not clear what climate change could mean for that otherwise predictable pattern.  Obviously, some animals win and some lose with each transition. 

When I started writing this, I was eating some crackers and a cheese-like substance, but I’ve put them up now.  As I sit here now, I can see a half-dozen or so vervets prowling around the neighborhood.  They’re extremely aggressive here and I’ve been expecting a concentrated attack.  Yesterday I pulled out a piece of firewood out of the bag and have it at the ready as my vervet scaring stick.  They of course know that a little stick 15 inches long is not much of a threat and I suspect they know that when humans are fat and have gray hair, they don’t have to be concerned about a stick in the least. And literally, while typing this, they’ve robbed my next-door neighbor.

Last night we ate at the restaurant overlooking the river and encountered a new menace.  The place is overrun with red-wing starlings.  These are medium sized birds, and very intelligent.  The adult males are quite beautiful, glossy black with beautiful brick-red patches on their wings.  They’ve learned to mob diners and will swoop down and take food off your plate while you’re eating.  Some of the tourists love it and at the table next to ours sat a young couple in love from some European county that will remain unnamed (but for the sake of illustration, let’s just call it BELGIUM) and they gave the birds free reign.  He photographed the birds and she video’d as the starlings fought over food right in front of them.  At the table on the other side, a group of people from another country (let’s just say from the home team) came and started feeding the birds and then decided the starlings were annoying so picked up and moved indoors, after training the birds to now focus their attention on us.

But the point of the story is that while we were sitting there, a tall, thin South African man walked in to take a table.  He’s one of those guys who seems to have a permanent scowl etched into his face.  As he approached the table he’d selected, the starlings swirled around him. And then he said, “Piss off!”.  And it worked!  The birds, obviously reading something about this man’s personality and intentions, left him alone throughout his dinner.

So that got me thinking whether the skillful use of those well-chosen English words could solve the vervet problem.  Since last night, I’ve been practicing.  When the ladies in the shop ask where I’m from – “Piss off!”.  When the lady asks if we want a lid for our takeaway peanut butter banana smoothie with protein, “Piss off!”  “Mr. Streck, how many bags will be checking for this flight?” “Piss off!”

Plus the vervet scaring stick.  And, as I’ve been writing this, a vervet sits in my neighbor’s dining area, eating an apple.  He ate a few bites out of it, decided he didn’t like it and threw it onto the ground.  He’d undoubtedly prefer bacon. Those people are going to be pissed when they get back from wherever they are right now, but it’s not like you’re not warned about the Little Bastards when you check in. Oh, now he’s eating white bread.

Day before yesterday, we closed the day with a frantic drive on the S100.  Looking for lions without success but we did get the briefest look at a group of four cheetah.

Yesterday, we left Satara and took the long back way to Olifants.  Along the way, we spotted three tawny heads sitting up some considerable distance from the road and recognized them immediately as male lions.  Not great shooting – too obscured by bush, too far (even using the 600 with a 1.4 extender) and too hot (meaning way too much heat haze).  We re-positioned to try and find some angle to shoot them without much success.  As the morning heated up, they moved progressively deeper into the bush, looking for better shade.  Then a light transporter with a military guy standing in the back, part of the anti-poaching effort, drove up. He was talking loudly and at the sight of an upright figure, the lions got up and moved down into the drainage line and completely out of sight, though not before we thought we saw that there might be four males in total.  After the military vehicle left, we drove back up on the road to our original position, hoping that for some reason they’d come back out. Then a miracle happened (which I won’t explain here) and the first lion stepped up over the rise and walked past the car.  I still had the extender on and was frantically trying to drive to position the car for the best shot and he kept altering his path to avoid the car.  He was a young male, but with the beginnings of a beautiful mane.  Then, another, younger male came out.  And then another.  Gina kept asking if I wanted to take the extender off, but they came through too quickly and I didn’t have the time.  It was nice to see these lions and to be close but photographically, it wasn’t going to be great.

Gina and I sat there talking about our fortune in having the lions walk by the car and I was taking the extender off when out of the corner of my eye, I caught some tan movement.  Shit.  There was the fourth male standing right next to the car.  More frantic repositioning but a couple of nice (though tight) frames came out of that.  He was another young male and was very, very pale in coloration.  People talk about the white lions of Kruger.  They’re not albinos, just a very pale, almost white, coloration.  This guy was not as white as that, but he was very light and striking.  The standard wisdom is that these ‘white’ lions don’t typically survive since they’re much more visible to potential prey.

Yesterday evening, we stayed in and rested.  This morning we got up at 0315 and went on a bush walk.  It was overcast, very warm and humid and still for the walk and as the morning progressed, thunderstorms built off to the west.  The rangers cut the walk short out of fear of rain and after our return we indeed got a nice shower. Now that weather’s blown through and it’s hot, windy and humid.  Not as hot as earlier in this trip, but plenty hot. It’s interesting that while we’ve had a nice shower today, it seems like nothing has changed.  It’s still dry, dusty and hot.

We’ll head out on another drive in a little bit, but I’m not especially optimistic. All of the animals will be under bushes, panting in the heat. I’m struggling with photographic output on this trip.  I think I was very lucky during my first two trips to KNP but even the last time here in ’13 seemed to generate more in the way of images.  Still, it’s a beautiful place to be and I can’t forget how lucky I am to be able to do this.

And, now for Gina’s Quote Of The Week: “Hey, you take that finger back!”

Cheetah

Young Pale Male Lion