Kathryn & Rick's Blog

Sleeping was rough last night.  We woke up about 3am to the sounds of baboons and couldn’t get back to sleep.  Here are pictures from today.

We saw a herd of 50 elephants and Gareth drove to a point several hundred feet ahead of where we were.  They just mozzied on by. One adolescent males stood in front of the Jeep and tried to intimidate us but we weren’t falling for that old ploy.  We also found a pride of lions lying in a dried river bed.

Here are a few more pictures of our camp

That night while we were eating dinner we watched an elephant roam into our camp.  When we were escorted back to our bungalow we passed him and he was about 120 ft from our unit.  About an hour later Rick was out on our deck and the elephant was right outside eating the leaves from the tree and the bushes. We all came out an watched him.  Eventually he wandered to in front of our bungalow and we tried to come out to watch him some more.  We were promptly told to get back inside by a guard.  Our ranger was out there trying to scare him by clapping and throwing stones.  Apparently he didn’t care and stayed in camp for awhile doing more damage.  He knocked over several very large planters and broke up several bushes.  The next morning we learned that he was in musk.  Elephants in musk can be very dangerous but he seemed gentle to us.  

Rather than bore you with a description of each day I will post some of best pictures from each day.  

Here are today’s pictures.

While out we saw a 3 year female leopard.  Her mother was killing by another animal when she was 12 months old.  She and her brother had to fend for themselves.  Unfortunately her brother didn’t make it.  She was eating a leftovers of a lion kill.  There were lions nearby and she was clearly monitoring them while she was eating.  

We also saw an 8 month male leopard.  His mother was alive but once they are that age mom starts to leave them alone.  There was a hyena nearby so he climbed a tree to protect himself.  

At the end of the day we stopped for appetizers and drinks.  How sophisticated!

That evening on the way back to the camp we saw three wild dogs which is very unusual sighting.  Unfortunately it was too dark for a picture.  

We left the hotel for the airport at 8:30.  We flew on a small plane to Skukuza which is the gateway to Kruger National Park.  We were collected and drove 45 minutes to MalaMala which is a private game reserve.  One of the major advantages of MalaMala over Kruger National Park is that you can drive off road.  Also at MalaMala, a ranger must guide all drives.  At Kruger no guide is needed and sometimes people traumatize the animals so they are very afraid of people.  Not so at MalaMala.

We were met at the lodge by Gareth, our ranger for the next 3 days.  He showed us around the facility and to our rooms which are amazing.  Here are some pictures.  

The camp is open to animals so there were male and female nyalas grazing in the grassy areas between the bungalows.  

After getting settled we had lunch which was fabulous.  Lunch was served on a deck overlooking a small river.  While we were eating elephants wandered by and were eating.

At 3:15 we met Gareth for coffee and sweets after which we went on our first game drive.  Here is a picture of our vehicle. Yes that is a gun on the front of the truck. 

We saw lots of birds which I can’t keep straight and are very hard to photograph so I won’t bore you with details about them.  Shortly we came a upon two female lions laying by the side of the road.  We spotted a male lion nearby laying in the grass.  We watched them for a while.  One of the females tried to catch an impala and then tried to herd them back towards the other female but they were unsuccessful.  The whole time Gareth was telling us about lions and answering our questions.  He was extremely knowledgeable and holds a masters in relevant fields.  Here are pictures of them.

Gareth was on the radio with the other rangers sharing sightings.  MalaMala has strict rules on how many vehicles can be around an animal.  They do not intervene in anyway unless the animal has been injured by a human.  So they just let nature take its course.  Eventually we moved on and found some baboons, adults and babies, that we watched for awhile.

Then we found some zebras.

While we were out, it got dark.  As we were driving back Gareth was waving a light across landscape looking for animal eyes which are red in the light.  We didn’t see any animals on the way back to camp.   

That evening we had dinner in the boma.  Here’s a daytime picture of the boma and the main reception area.  

The wait staff and cooks call us to dinner by parading through the lodge and singing local songs.  Dinner was another excellent meal.  All of the staff are very friendly, courteous, and helpful.  Overall we are really impressed with this camp. 

The flights were long but we made it to Johannesburg.  We were met by our tour company as soon as we came through the jetway.  We were whisked through immigration and customs.  Our hotel is attached to the airport so we just walked to it.  We got off the plane at 9 and were in our hotel room by 9:30.  We pretty much just fell into bed.  Luckily we were able to sleep until the alarm went off at 7.

We met Patty, Tim, Kay, and Mike at breakfast.

Our tour guide, Jo, met us in the lobby.  After a brief discussion with her, we decided we would go to Constitution Hill, Apartheid Museum and Soweto.

A little bit of background about Jo’burg as it’s called.  It was originally built for the whites and the nonwhites were housed outside the city.  The whites represent 9% of the population.  Now that people are free to live anywhere and more and more people are picking Jo’berg, it’s infrastructure is really being taxed.  Jo’berg also contains a lot of art and graffiti to beautify the city.  The city was built where gold was originally found and not on a water source.  Here are a couple of pictures of J’berg.

First stop Constitution Hill.  There was a jail for political activists opposed to apartheid and common criminals.  Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were held here. Most of it was torn down to make space for the Constitution Court of South Africa.  They left the stairwells as a reminder of how South Africa has overcome the dark days of oppression. The court is the equivalent of our Supreme Court, except it has 11 justices.  We went inside the court.  Inside is meant to look like an open space under the trees because traditionally in the village that was where judgements were made.  In the lobby area they had sculptures hanging from the ceiling which looked like tree boughs and the rug was meant to look like dappled light. Here are some pictures of court and art

After exploring the court we went to the Apartheid Museum.  Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s. At the time whites represented 8% of the population and nonwhites represented 92%. It was really awful how the government treated the non whites.  Jo guided us through the history and the evolution of the Apartheid system.  At the museum the movies of the violence in the streets were so disturbing that I had to leave the room.  You were not allowed to take pictures at the museum.  We had a nice lunch at the museum restaurant.

Then we drove to Soweto, an Apatheid township.  Initially it was outside the city but now the city has grown and incorporated it.  When it was built it did not include places for people to purchase food and anything else they need.  It didn’t get electricity until the 70’s.  Although the people in Soweto were expected to come into the city to work for the whites there was no transit system for them to get there.  The houses were quite small and very close together (the whites didn’t want them to have enough room to farm.). We went by Winnie Mandela’s house and then went to Nelson Mandela’s home.  Winnie lived there while Nelson was in prison. There had been a brick wall separating the kitchen and the living room that Winnie and her daughters could hide behind when they were being harassed by the police which was a frequent occurrence.  Here are a picture of Manela’s house.

That evening we went to Wimpy’s, a hamburger place at the airport.  It was not fine dining but it was just fine.