Monday, 6 June, 2011
Game Drives from Bateleur
Bateleur
gate
Left camp at 6:05 a.m., our earliest start yet. So early, in fact,
that we had to open the gate ourselves. It looks locked, but
there's just a removable loop of chain holding the gate closed.
Our short route this morning: southern S52 west, Red Rocks Loop
(looking for leopards), across the Shingwedzi riverbed to the
northern S52 west and back to camp. No cats, but we saw another
black-backed jackal, a large kudu, a different kind of antelope, a
nyala, which resembles a kudu, and a tiny antelope called a
Sharpe's grysbok.
Nice
rack!
Sharpe's
grysbok
There were also several giraffes, some baboons, a pair of African
fish-eagles, a pair of saddle-billed storks, and, right outside
camp, several extra-large elephants.
Curious
giraffes
Big
tusker
We were back at Bateleur by 9:15. Tom and I took a walk around
camp, not having gotten much of a look during our nighttime
exploration. Unlike Talamati, which was close to a Kruger gate,
enabling most of the staff to leave each night, Bateleur is far
from any park exit, so it has extensive crew quarters.
Consequently, even though Bateleur houses the fewest guests, it's
much larger overall than Talamati.
Our cottage at
Bateleur
On our walk, we saw turtles sunning themselves at the hide
waterhole, the first life we'd seen there, and a cute little skink
running in and out of the fence.
Animal hide,
Bateleur
I like
turtles
Variable
skink
At 11:15 Tom and I went out on another drive, just the two of us
this time. Our route: northern S52, H1-6/H1-7 north, H1-7/H1-6
south, southern S52, Red Rocks loop, across the Shingwedzi riverbed
to the northern 52 and back to Bateleur.
Notable animals on the S52 were multiple giraffes, another
chameleon crossing the road, and then a great group of vultures.
There was no carrion present, so I don't know what the vulture
get-together was about. At one point we saw some South Africans
outside their vehicle at an unauthorized location, so then we were
compelled to leave our car a couple of unauthorized times too.
Venue of
vultures
Tom being
Tom
On the H1-7 we waited a long distance back as a herd of elephants
crossed the road, while other vehicles waited much closer. Then
when we passed the elephants a few minutes later, one of them
trumpeted angrily at our car. How rude! We'd done just what we were
supposed to. That was an ill-tempered elephant!
Elephant
droppings
Baobab near
Bateleur
We returned to camp at 3:15, had a beer, picked up Linda, and at
4:00 headed for Rooibosant Dam, which we again had all to
ourselves. There were several hippos tonight and one crocodile that
we watched swim around for a long time, hoping he'd do something
interesting. At 5:25 we whooshed back into camp, and they closed
the gate behind us.
This is our last night in Kruger and our last night of
self-catering, so I dumped most all the food we had left into a
pot, fried it up, and called it dinner. I cooked up bite-sized
chunks of beef, poured in a can of corn and a can of kidney beans,
added a diced tomato, and there you go. It was good. Tom and I
mixed in the last of our chakalaka, and it was even better. And a
bottle of South African cabernet sauvignon to toast our time at
Kruger made it better still.
The high today was 88 degrees. Our car had a thermometer in it that
gave the temperature in Celsius, but I've converted the temperature
throughout this journal to Fahrenheit for the benefit of our
American brains. Any in-room temperatures were gathered from the
thermometer on my travel alarm, which requires no conversion.
Tomorrow's going to be a long day, so I went to bed at 9:00. We
need to be up and out of here as early as we possibly can.
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