Author: matt

We started off the morning with a plan to not really have a plan, other than visiting hyenas. There’s a hyena den nearby the camp that we went to go check out. They’re just super cute. There was the matriarch and a juvenile but mostly grown male taking care of three hyena cubs. She was standing guard at the entrance to the den, an old termite mound, and the cubs were hanging out inside. They’d come out to check out what was going on outside and to have mom give them a bath. Mom didn’t much care about our presence but the cubs were a bit unsure about what was going on.

After our hyena time, we headed across the river to the north section of the Londolozi property. Crossing the river we came across a bunch of hippos cooling off in the river. The mist on the water and the low early morning light made it quite a beautiful scene.

We didn’t really know what we were looking for, other than a general idea that maybe we’d look for wild dog tracks. We didn’t get very far though before we heard on the radio that there was a leopard with a fairly mature cub spotted in a dry river bed near where we were. We headed straight for it at as fast as we could and found the leopard had left her cub behind and was just starting on a walk about of her territory to check things out and to make sure the scent markers were all still there. There were some nyalas near her path, but I guess she didn’t feel like dealing with them so she just walked on by and let them freak out about her being there. She did walk after them to make sure they knew who was boss or something, but she definitely wasn’t going to try to hunt them.

After a brief lie down, she heard some impala males through a couple of trees and decided those would be good for hunting. So for the second time, we got to see a leopard stalking their prey. She sat and watched them for a while, and while repositioning she came right by the truck, I thought she might jump over it for a second, but she went around. Unfortunately, she got spotted by the impala and they ran off before she could make an attempt. After that we made our way back to camp for breakfast.  

We’d planned on doing a bush walk after that, but Barry decided to postpone for tomorrow immediately after the morning drive so that it wouldn’t be as hot out. Yesterday’s covid test came back in about 24 hours, not too bad turn around (negative, of course.) So we won’t be stuck here.

The afternoon started off with a whistle. Just after leaving camp, one of our tires blew out. Of course this happened just as one of the owners of Londolozi was driving by so that must have been fun for Barry. He and Tsepo got the tire changed out pretty quickly and we were on our way.

As a joke from an offhand comment in the morning, Jack made safari bingo cards for everyone, where the first person to spot the animal on the card gets to fill it in. Everyone had a great time looking out for stuff to fill in. We didn’t see much beyond the usual though, so no one got bingo on that drive at least. Near the end of the drive, Barry and Tsepo switched places for fun and Tsepo pretended to drive Barry into a tree.

As we were heading for the traditional sundowner, we turned the corner to find a bar and charcuterie table setup on a rock by the river. The camp manager Jenna and head chef Chane were there waiting for us and had set it up as a sort of farewell since this was our last night there. We made cocktails for everyone and had a great time talking food with the head chef. We got Jenna making some cocktails too. It was a great time for all I think, and Jack managed to find a cocktail that Tsepo and Millie liked.  For Tsepo and Millie, it was there first cocktails ever.

After wrapping up our lovely sundowner, we headed back for camp. We spotted a ton of nocturnal critters on the relatively short drive. We’d jokingly asked if Tsepo could find a chameleon, it’s actually possible at night since they turn white, and he managed to find one in a couple of minutes. We also spotted a couple of bushy tailed mongoose and a Genet, neither of which we’d ever seen before.

Gennet

Back at camp in the boma we had dinner with our Land Rover companions and Barry. We, again, had a blast chatting with them. After three visits, we finally managed to see the local Shangaan folks dancing and singing after dinner. On previous visits we kept missing it because we went to bed too early (imagine that.) It was really impressive, they were truly fantastic. We continued on with our lovely conversation (and wine) and Jenna and Chane joined us for more great conversation. Chane made us all a round of Springbokkie shots, which is Creme de Menthe and Amarula, which luckily isn’t too strong.  Such wonderful companionship.

5/13/21

It’s really good to be back at Londolozi. Last night was so much fun, chatting with Will and seeing what cocktails we could figure out with their bar selection.This morning we got up early so we could get out and look for a leopard mother and two cubs that are generally at the south end of the Londolozi territory. We had a really nice mother and daughter from Sweden in our group, and a woman who is with her husband here (he’s doing an audit for Londolozi and she came along to check out the place.)We found a couple of big herds of elephants pretty much right off. We were driving by a watering hole and spotted some elephants coming towards it, so we turned around and got on the other side of the watering hole from them. They walked on by, a few came up to get a drink, and we got to watch a long line of elephants go by.
As we continued our search for the leopard, we came across another herd of elephants munching away at teak leaves and marula trees. One juvenile couldn’t quite reach something on a tree that he wanted so he was determined to push it over. He tried a number of times, but the tree bested him. We also saw a tiny little elephant nursing its mom, which was pretty special.We moved on a bit and heard an impala making an alarm call back in the direction we’d just come from, so we circled back and the elephants were blocking the road, so we stopped and waited for them. The entire herd slowly made its way toward us as they walked along the road too. We wound up being pretty much surrounded by them, but they were quite relaxed since they’d come to us and we were just sitting there.I’m going to blame the elephant traffic jam, but by the time we made it through we didn’t find any leopards. We stopped for a morning coffee and as Barry was talking about how cool it is to stumble on a herd of elephants or a rhino, Jack looked out at the horizon and saw a rhino. We watched it for a bit while we finished our coffee (with Amarula) and there was also a little calf as well. We followed it around for a while and watched the little one playing around and looking at us a little skeptically. As we made our way back to camp, there was a hippo out of the water in the pond outside of camp. It’s pretty rare to see a hippo out during the day, so that was a cool sight. It was covered in duck weed, since the pond is similarly covered in it.After we got back and had our breakfast, we’d intended to have a nice walk around the lodge, but pretty much immediately fell asleep for a nap. This getting up early stuff can really take it out of you. For our evening game drive, we went out looking for more leopards. It took a while, and we didn’t wind up running into much else, but we finally found a male leopard. We followed him through a dry creek bed and he even walked past the truck a couple of times in pretty close proximity. Leopards have these piercing green eyes that seem to just stare right through you. It’s quite a thrill to be that close to them and have them look right at you. After we got back to camp, it was dinner in the boma, with pre-dinner drinks around the fire. After chatting with Will and Londolozi’s general manager a bit over a G&T, we headed for the bar to make cocktails for everyone again. Everyone seems pretty excited about cocktails, I’m guessing they’ll be serving them soon. We had a great dinner with Will and Barry, chatting for hours, and it was off to bed.

5/11/21

We woke up pretty bleary eyed this morning. We were going all day yesterday and we didn’t get back until bed time basically. But we got moving and we were going to start the day off with the meerkats. On the way there, we got a call that the wild dogs might be in the area which is pretty surprising given that they were many kilometers away yesterday when we saw them. Sure enough, here they were pretty close to the lodge, and better yet, they were on the move. They were definitely on the hunt for something, but they hadn’t found anything specific yet. We got to see them darting off in different directions looking for something, and then stopping to look around, listen and smell, then dart off in some direction again. It was great to see them moving around as a pack.

Just like yesterday, it was three individuals, the alpha female and two males. The fourth member of the pack is presumably back at the den with the pups. We got to followed them around for quite a while, and they were slowing going in the direction of the giraffe carcass from the other day. They didn’t have any urgency to what they were doing so it didn’t seem like they were aware of it, but we were hoping they’d stumble across it. Unfortunately, while they got pretty close, they stayed upwind of it and never noticed it. We followed up them until they disappeared into the hills.

Another truck joined us just as they were disappearing that was filming for a Wild Earth live safari, which is broadcast live (or probably live-ish) on the goo-tubes. It looks like this is the video.

We drove off and made it to the meerkats after our wild dog diversion. We got to hang out near their den with a family and three or four week old pups. The pups were happily rolling around and playing with the parents were on the look out for predators and doing a bit of scavenging for bugs.

After our morning coffee we heard over the radio that the live safari truck had spotted the cheetahs from yesterday near a watering hole that the wild dogs had taken us by a bunch of times this morning already. It sounded like they got some good video of that, so might be worth checking out that link, I think these cheetahs are the headline shot from the video. So we made our way back over there and got to see the cheetah brothers walking around trying to find a good place to nap for the day. We followed them along for a while and got to see them moving around before they did indeed find a nice shady tree to sleep under.

For the afternoon drive, we went way into the lion side, looking for the big male lions. We were actually mostly setting down tracks so that it would be easier to find them the next day. Basically we were making clean Land Rover (“landy”) tracks, so we’d be able to tell if tracks on top of them were fresh. While we were doing this, we came across some nice zebra. Rather impressively we also stumbled across a rhino. He was off in the bush a bit, but we got some nice views of him.

After we got back, dinner was a nice “feast” with pork belly and roast chicken. Pretty tasty all around. We headed for the room a bit early so we could pack up to finish up our morning game drive at the air strip.

5/9/21

After last night’s lion and rain filled outing, we weren’t quite sure what to expect with the morning’s drive. Turned out that we had some good clear weather, even though it was pretty chilly until the sun rose pretty well into the sky. We were going out to have a look for rhinos and possibly a big male lion depending on what turned up.

It was rhinos that we got, driving along a road Richard suddenly spotted a rhino horn sticking out of the brush. This is pretty impressive because the brush was fairly dense and about as tall as the rhino. It was a female white rhino with a calf about two years old. We managed a couple of quick pictures before the rhino decided she’d had enough of us and trotted off into the brush again. It’s pretty impressive that a critter the size of a light truck can just disappear silently into the brush, but it can.

After a bit more searching we came across yet another white rhino, this time a big male. He was a bit more cooperative and we were able to hang with him for five minutes or so before he too trotted off into the dense brush.

We kept on looking for more rhinos, specifically hoping to find a black rhino, but nothing turned up. Along the way though, we came across some mountain zebra. They’re stunning animals, they have white bellies and extremely sharply defined stripes everywhere else, with none of the brownish undercoat that other zebra have. We also stumbled across a black backed jackal that seemed pretty curious about what we were up to.

We were warned that this evening we’d be visiting the fancy restaurant at the hotel, so we should have a light breakfast so we have lots of room for dinner. That also meant a fairly short afternoon game drive. We went out to the west of the reserve to look for more rhinos, but didn’t come across very much other than a large herd of oryx. As we made our way back and towards the restaurant, we came across a bunch of giraffes and some of them were playing with and chewing on a kudu horn. Apparently they will sometimes gnaw on bones and horns in order to get additional calcium in their diet.

We arrived at the restaurant to find that it was a quaint frontier style two room house with some tables on the patio. Inside you could see it was well decorated with pieces from the era including kerosene lamps and 1920s music playing. Outside there were clothes hanging on a line and a rusty windmill peaking over the roof. We sat down at a table on the patio and had a “beer” brewed from local plants which is a traditional coming of age sort of beverage. It wasn’t exactly good, but it was chewy! After a bite of an appetizer and finishing our beer we were led inside to check out the house.

They took us out the back door to find the windmill and corrugated metal water tank or silo with a strange lit door on the side of it. This all felt very much like a Cyan style video game at this point and even more so after we went into the door. Inside was a spiral stair case leading down under ground with water falling in the center of it. This lead to a long brightly lit hall way going further underground. This turned out to be a root cellar with various gourds, fruits, cheeses, aging meats and wine bottles along the walls. At the end of the cellar there was a small room with an antique coal oven and a table full of breads, roasted pork and a nice dessert wine to start off with. They served us a fantastic little cup of pumpkin soup to go along with that.

Finally after this room, the door opened onto the dining room with the entire opposite wall open to the sunset over the savanna. This place was apparently built into a hill side. Now time for actual dinner, and they started with a beautiful pumpkin salad with grapes. Our wine pairings came in impossibly delicate stemware. The main course consisted of ten different takes on traditional South African dishes, it was quite a spread. Then there were the several dessert rounds, which were a preserved peach and watermelon gremolata and some sort of whipped evaporated milk. Then a hard meringue shell filled with a camel’s milk caramel, lemon sorbet and date gelatin. Finally there was the truffle course with a couple of exquisite chocolate truffles and after dinner drinks served in more impossible glassware.

W

e didn’t know anything about any of this before hand so it was quite a surprise. The story here is that South Africa’s first chef to earn a Michelin star (Jan Hendrik) created this restaurant as sort of a home coming to celebrate South Africa’s culinary heritage. Quite a night!

5/7/2021

We left for the Cape Town airport early in the morning and had a nice chat with our driver about politics and vaccines along the way. Instead of flying out of the main terminal, this was a private flight going out to Tswalu with just us, our guide at Tswalu and a helicopter pilot for the lodge joining us, so we went to the Execujet terminal. Our plane was a little six seater PC-12NG. For such a small plane, it was really quite comfortable and there was plenty of leg room.

After about two hours flying time, we made it to Tswalu where we were greeted with coffee and snacks in an open air thatched roof building that had hundreds of sociable weavers’ nests in it. They were flitting around everywhere collecting bits of dried grass to add to their nests.

Probably due to low bookings, we wound up with a massive family suite so we have two bedrooms, a living room, two bathrooms and a huge private patio right up against the savanna. There are no lions in the area of the reserve where the lodge is located, so it’s safe to be out on the patio at night and to walk around the lodge without an escort. There were however, wildebeest that were playing around 20 feet or so from the patio, so that was exciting to watch.

South Africa is having quite a boom of artisanal gins so the lodge has a pretty good selection of those on hand. Given the importance of gin and tonics on safari, we had a little gin tasting to find a nice botanical option that’s not too juniper forward. We settled on Cape Town Rooibos Red as our go to.

After a ridiculously large lunch and later some snacks, we headed out on our first game drive. We started off going to a meerkat den. They were in the midst of some territorial squabbles and a pack was chasing off some interloper. There were a couple of individuals that hung out by the den near us and watching them go out on patrol was pretty incredible. Hopefully we’ll get to give it another go when there are more around later. Other sightings for the day were some giraffes and oryx.

After we got back to the lodge, we had a gin and tonic by a camp fire before embarking on another ludicrously large and delicious meal.

5/5/2021