a slow morning
Ezulwini Billy's Lodge, greater Kruger park, September 25, circa noon local time
Like yesterday morning, the day started with a 5 am knock at the door. I put on my new underwear and socks, my sweaty pants and shirt, and my cargo vest. I assembled things for the game drive - still camera, video camera, and borrowed jacket. I went to the lounge area and started greeting people, and had some tea.
Only one of the New Zealand ladies was going on the morning drive; the other had decided she'd pass and get some more sleep. After the morning snack, we loaded onto the vehicle, and driver-guide Patrick and spotter Conrad took their positions.
Soon after we left, we had our first sightings: some impala, then a giraffe. Yes, they're beautiful animals, but we've seen our share of them. Where are the lions?
For lack of animal sightings, we checked out the other nature. We saw an interesting tree called a chamber-pod, with huge seed pods hanging from the branches.
At a dam site, our spotter got out of the vehicle to walk the shore, looking for tracks of lions, leopards, or other interesting animals. While he worked on that, we looked at the birds.
We spotted blacksmith plovers, a gray heron, and an eagle, then puzzled over exact species for a bit. While trying to identify the eagle, I turned the exposure compensation way up, which washes out the sky but shows more detail in a brightly back-lit image. That improved the pictures that were back-lit by the sky, but it would make more evenly-lit pictures overexposed. And I'm still not sure if we conclusively identified the eagle's species.
The area where I've been is technically not a part of Kruger park. Instead, it's part of greater Kruger - private land owners have removed fences and generally manage their land the same way that the actual park does, but it's not actually part of the park itself. Most of the land owners grant each other mutual passage rights, so the experience isn't much different from the actual park. However, there are a few holdouts who have kept their fences in place, and some who have removed their fences but haven't granted others passage rights. Typically, those who don't grant others passage rights aren't allowed passage rights either, and they also don't have free access into the actual park.
Anyway, most of the guides, not just from the other Ezulwini lodges, but also from various other lodges in the area, keep in touch by radio to share news of noteworthy sightings. Word came through on the radio that a pride of lions had been seen near the highest point among in the private section of greater Kruger. Instead of our closer-by searching, we headed in that direction.
The view from the high point was expansive, but although it was interesting in the sense that we could see a great distance in any direction, it wasn't really scenic in a way that would have made a pretty picture. We looked around a bit, saw no lions, and headed back down the hill.
Along our way we came across a beautiful scenic view point. The trees were vivid green, not dusty washed out colors I had seen most places. The green showed the influence of the Olifant River. I took a few attempts at landscape photographs. Unfortunately, my photographs are overexposed, but maybe I can do something digitally.
Other than birds, animals were scarce for a while. The ride was still interesting, from birds and variations in terrain and vegetation, but large animals were scarce. We came across a handful of warthogs.
As we started to get back into familiar territory, Olifant Road, I think, we saw something amusing. There was a cell phone tower, or some sort of communications tower, standing along the side of the road. Part of the way up it had ladder steps projecting from the side, and higher up there was an octagonal metal safety cage around the ladder steps. And inside the safety cage, there was a massive buffalo weaver nest. Next time a maintenance worker needs to climb that tower, he'll need to rip out a lot of nest. The birds may have something to say about that.
After nearly an hour without animal sightings, we stopped for a break - tea with a few choices of dry snacks. It was relaxing. I drank my tea carefully, because at some point (maybe a day or two earlier) I had burned my mouth, either on a past cup of tea, irritant burns from salt or some strong cinnamon gum I chewed to freshen my breath before the lodge staff got me the emergency tooth brush, or maybe something as simple as a dry mouth. Whatever the reason, I drank my tea carefully, and even had to avoid scratching the tender tongue on rough bits of crackers.
During the break, Patrick explained what may have gone wrong with the reports of the pride of lions. They had been seen near a patch of land that wasn't part of the mutual access agreement. The guess was that they'd turn up on the other side of that land eventually, so we headed around to the far side of that property. Apparently the lions had found a reason to stay on the closed property, or maybe they were just hiding somewhere. But they weren't out in the open; no one else had reported seeing them again either.
The next sighting was a real winner: a bull rhino. He was walking his territory, marking periodically with spray from a scent gland, and sniffing to inspect for rival males. Patrick explained that a male rhino will tolerate other males visiting his territory, but only if they show deference. But if a visiting male sprays his own scent mark over the resident's mark, or tramples the resident's dung, he has declared a challenge, and a confrontation is likely to result.
I got a number of pictures of the rhino. When we got to a spot where we had seen the rhino scent-spraying, Patrick stopped for a closer look. I leaned out of the vehicle, but I couldn't smell anything; either I didn't get close enough (not that I wanted to) or it's only distinctive to rhino noses. (That's very different from the elephant musk we smelled in Hluhluwe Imfolozi - that was a strong smell from fifty meters away.) I also took a picture of the spatter marks from the scent spray.
The bad news about the rhino encounter was that I still hadn't switched my camera's exposure compensation off, so I was still overexposing my pictures. I'm sure I can rescue some of them, however. After watching the rhino for a while, we turned back, passing the tower with the buffalo weaver nest again. Since it was backlit against the sky, it benefited from the exposure compensation, so I didn't notice the mistake then. I tried to get a picture of the entire tower, but it seems we hit a bump too hard for my lens's image-stabilization to absorb.
Our final animal encounter on the way back to the lodge was giraffes. I didn't see anything distinctive about them, and I still had my camera set wrong, so I'm not saving my pictures.