The roads in North West Province are execrable. Maintenance is seriously lacking, particularly on the R572, which unbelievably so is a secondary route to Zimbabwe. The tar is so badly potholed (“more like sinkholes” according to the drivers) that Keith, looking back from a distant hill, commented over the Zartek: “Oh, I see a cloud…
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Why is it that for the second time in a row we book our stay in Mapungubwe to coincide with the Tour de Tuli?! Clouds of dust and the growl of vehicles as 300 cyclists converge on the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo Rivers. Their little encampment is not somewhere we would like to…
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Other than a flicking ear, this is the closest I got to a wild dog (experts like to call it painted dog these days), a logo on a safari vehicle, even if I’m now advertising someone else’s business. Our six-hour drive to Musina just outside Kruger’s Pafuri gate felt very, very long even though we…
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There is no logic in the bush. Nothing happens according to predictable algorithms. Life hinges simply on super finely tuned senses. Avoiding danger. Protecting your babies. Responding to the signal of hunger or thirst. You need just watch a stately kudu male picking a meticulously slow path — pause and listen, pause and listen —…
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I hate those Sightings boards at every camp with their neat, precise, red squares for lion, blue squares for leopard. They set up such rabid FOMO — just knowing that others (not you) have hit that absolutely perfect moment of timing, the briefest instance of connecting in which two paths, the animal’s and yours, serendipitously…
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On our last night at Shimuwini we watched an ox-blood full moon peep up over the trees, then heft itself slowly into the night sky. We were sitting like three Stooges on a bench above the Letaba River, waiting for it to rise. And it did, three-quarters of an hour later than the previous evening….
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In these parts, temperatures leap from 5°C to 27°. It’s all a bit bewildering. From beanies and socks to summer tops and flipflops in the space of a morning. It was an early start for us today to accommodate a long day’s driving north, past Satara, to Shimuwini. Coffee break overlooking the Olifants River on…
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Our tented camp is strung out along the dry Timbavati River bed and the night activity along here is wonderful. We dined to the sound of elephant crackling and munching and rumbling on the treed riverbank, listened to the whooo-oop! of spotted hyena throughout the night, and actually saw one with our spotlight right at…
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It’s so amazing how different one day can be from another. The first night there were hyena whoops and lions grunting, the second it was utterly still except for the whistling of a pearl-spotted owlet. Our unit at Tamboti Tented Camp Our first day was extremely pleasant but nothing to spike the temperatures. There were…
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It was a 3°C morning. Even the Disco’s dashboard flashed us a snowflake. Our day was one of African amplitude … great wide open spaces. With the soft cinnamons and purples of the Drakensberg rampart on the horizon, all around us were big skies and low undulating fields of cropped golden grass cut through by…
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