Day 7 – Close Encounter

I think the group is more coffee than flesh with how much we are consuming this trip. Once we were caffeinated, we jumped in the car and headed out on what ended up being a pretty incredible drive. Gummy is an incredible tracker. He has been in the bush on foot working for 30 years, and you can tell just by the way he is able to read the land and spot animals and obscure clues left behind by the creatures we are searching for. We are so grateful for those eyes, because he gifted us the most memorable experiences today.

Straight off the bat we were able to find some hyena tracks, which is one of the animals on our list of “to see”. Gummy and Emile lead us straight to a couple of hyena looking for their pack mates within a few minutes! It’s very special to watch actually, their teamwork and different knowledge working together to achieve a goal, but in different ways. The two hyena we found were a little stressed and flighty, so we left them after a few minutes, only for Gummy to point off to the right hand side and say “lion”.

Holy moly was this encounter memorable! Not only did Gummy find us a male lion about 25 meters off the road (I have no idea how he spotted him), but he found us a male lion with on a kill. And then Emile, with his insane level driving, brought us closer and closer. I thought surely we will stop here, give the lion eating breakfast space, but no… we stopped probably 2 metres away from him. He ate for a few minutes more and then decided to leave us to find a drink, but did so by making direct eye contact and walking passed the car at about 1 metre away. This was the first time I felt any level of fear since the beginning of this trip. I didn’t get a photo of this since I was purely focussed on being the least bit threatening, but man was it exhillerating!

Shortly after, the car radio became abuzz with a flurry of voices speaking in Afrikaans. We quickly changed directions, heading south. Emile remained tight-lipped, but as we approached our destination, we were placed in a standby queue, as only three cars were allowed at a time. After receiving the green light, we cautiously moved closer. Our eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Right in front of us, a pack of four wild dogs was playing with the remains of an impala. This pack consisted of three males and one female. The dominant male and the female form a partnership, while the others loiter nearby. What caught our attention was one of the other males in the pack displaying mild aggression towards the dominant male, suggesting a potential challenge for dominance in the future. The leader of the pack is typically the dominant female. These ‘danger puppies’ were engrossed in playful antics, using the impala carcass for tug-of-war and having a grand time. We stayed with the pack until they began to veer off the trail and it was time for us to keep exploring.

While driving away from the wild dogs, we came across out hyena buds stealing the remnants of the lion kill from earlier. There’s something about hyenas that make me love them so much, but they’re quick little buggers, so they’re difficult to capture with the camera, but watching them being the opportunistic creatures that they are was pretty special.

For the majority of the game drive, we had some smaller encounters:

• Kudu
• Grey heron
• Grey goaway
• A family of banded mongoose
• a croc who shouldn’t have been in the dam her was in since there are no close water sources he could have come from

We also got to spend some time tracking a couple of male lions, who unfortunately evaded us today, but we know where they frequent now, so we will keep an eye on those areas while on our drive.

We headed back to the farmhouse for some breakfast and a relax before heading out again for our evening drive. We haven’t had a bad meal while we have been in South Africa, and lunch was no exception. The team here do a magnificent job catering for our preferences.

After lunch we had a little time to ourselves, so we explored the lodge a little more. Drew found the day spa area, which has a walkway and a balcony overlooking a waterhole. This is where he found a herd of of elephants munching on some leaves and dung. It was pretty magical being able to sit and watch these beauties for as long as we wanted.

When 4 o’clock came around again, we headed out on our evening drive. It was a pretty standard drive for the majority, where we met:

• Roan
• Black impala
• Waterbuck
• Elephant Nerds (gotta love an autocorrect) herds*, one of which had a female elephant with a severely dislocated hip. It was terribly sad to watch, but these reserves don’t interfere with anything that occurs naturally to their animals. Unfortunately, she likely had a fall which popped her hip out of the socket, and she had learnt to get around with that injury since. It looked to be an older injury since the muscles in the effected leg had started to wither from disuse.
• Lilac breasted roller
• Black shouldered kite
• A family unit of rhino

During our drive we came across another guide car in the middle of the road. They had a severely flat tire and couldn’t get out of the way, and additionally, the car was not fitted with a car jack. Emile asked if we minded stopping briefly to assist the stranded car. There was a moment where there were three guides trying to change this tyre, and when Emile came back over he joked about “How many guides does it take to change a tyre?”. The answer is one, Gummy. He saved the day essentially changing it solo.

When we stopped for our Sundowners, we had been standing around an Impala midden (a big pile of droppings that a few animals make as a way to mark their territory and also pass on information about comings and goings) when we heard a pack of jackals calling for one another. It was such an interesting sound! This pitstop is also where it became obscenely obvious that this group of Australians are tired. We spent the rest of the pitstop playing with our ponchos that we had been wearing to protect from the rain. I’m fairly sure this had cemented our position in Emile and Gummy’s most unforgettable group of idiots.

We drove for a bit longer, and then started to head back when the sun was getting a little too low on the horizon. There was a moment where we had to wait for a couple of elephants to move off the road so that we could pass, but this instead resulted in a fairly close encounter. We pulled off to the side behind another car with aim to just let the elephant walk passed us and keep moving on. This is mostly how it went, with him just showing slight interest in us on the way passed. Because at this point it was pretty dark, and Ellys don’t have the best night sight, the spot light is a fairly powerful deterrent, as they keep away from the bright light, so with one flash of the light, Gummy was about to keep this bulls cheekiness in check, and he continued his walk passed us. I’ll include a short video of this encounter, theres no editing so it’s dark and a little long and there is background chatter, but it shows how it feels to interact with an elephant at night. It still gives me goosebumps thinking about it.

We continued on our way back to the farmhouse, with one more interesting find. We were pretty close to home, Gummy on the bonnet tracker seat with the spotlight, Emile spotted a flap necked chameleon! This guy was such a cool critter. Emile got out and grabbed him to bring him over for a closer look. He was bright white and ice cold as he was sleeping, so he was slightly annoyed and started reaching out looking to grab the tree he was last on. With the darkness, I don’t have any photos, but he was such a cool find! We only kept him for a short while before popping him back to bed and headed the rest of the way home.

We had spingbok for dinner, which is another thing on my list of African foods that i’ve tried, and headed to bed. We are all getting very tired at this point. With the early morning drives, and getting back late from our evening drives, having dinner and heading to bed, we’re all getting low on energy reserves. But we’re headed towards the end of the trip, so I’m trying my best to make the. most of every single second we have in this beautiful country before we get dragged back to reality.