The first was a serious battle between two Wildebeest. Towards the end the winner had the looser on the ground and was goring it. The weaker one got to his feet and ran off only to have the other chase him out of the territory horning him so hard in the backside that it lifted his hind quarters clear of the ground over and over again. In the end the weaker one fell over again and was gored for quite a while until the winner ran triumphantly off. We waited quite a while for the poor boy to stand up and limp away.

The second sighting was a black rhino sleeping in the open on shore. When we got close (I initially thought it was a pile of red soil) it stood up and posed wonderfully for the guests before trotting off into the forest.

A serval is sighted from the boat. My colleague Bheki was very excited as it is the first he has seen in all his years of guiding. At first he was not sure what he was looking at and even once he had decided that it was indeed this very elusive cat he was hesitant to tell the guests – but it was and it stood still for photographs.

I did a double trip (half the group first and half second). The first group got perfect weather and loads of game and birds to watch but I was a bit worried about the second groups chances as the wind and wave suddenly came up mid afternoon. I need not have been - to make up for the weather Jozini decided to give me a sighting to remember.

We arrived in the park and at the first picnic site had a great interaction with a white rhino and calf (we were on foot and Mkhuzi’s picnic sites are not fenced). On our way back to the road we found a beautiful giraffe near a mud hole and whilst we were admiring it a great splashing alerted us to the arrival of a small heard of elephant. When they finished their swim we followed them as they fed parallel to us until they crossed the road and meandered of into a river bed. The rest of the drive was beautiful and gave us sightings of warthog, zebra, wildebeest, kudu, nyala, steenbok, impala, red and grey duiker, monkeys and baboon as well as hippo in the pan. The cherry on the top came right at the end – with Mkhuze gate only closing at 19h00 – in the twilight of late evening we saw a big male leopard in the road. He strolled along marking territory until a car coming in the opposite direction with its lights on chased him off. That was not all – as we eased off hoping for a sighting of him in the bush I noticed a small movement on the roadside and there next to a bush was a female lying not 10 meters from the road.

This is where the Karma comes in because after we drove off – late for the gate again – I called a friend and boasted about the sighing. Once we got out the gate and in the pitch dark in rural Africa – a flat tire to to end the day – A truly African experience all round

Bheki did a game drive in Mkhuze Game Reserve yesterday evening with a family of eight. I met him when he came home and he was wide eyed about a Leopard sighting that they had witnessed. He stopped for a mixed herd of zebra and kudu that were showing signs of stress about something. Suddenly a big male leopard exploded out of the grass about twenty meters away and chased after the kudu. The kudu then realized that they were a bit to big to be leopard food and stopped to face the big cat down whereupon he promptly lay down and disappeared in the bush. I saw the guests at breakfast this morning and the conversation was along these lines:

“I hear you had a superb drive yesterday”

The answer:

“Yes we saw six Giraffes”

Me

“And the leopard chasing the kudu”

Them

“Oh! Yes one of those too”

Just goes to show

This morning I took two guests on a boat cruise. When they got on the safari vehicle the man said “I wish you were taking us somewhere more exciting in this”. I just kept quiet. The Cruise started with a magnificent tusker in the floodplains with a dead tree adorned with two fish eagles near the shore. Later after impala, zebra, wildebeest, warthog, reedbuck and hippo we found a large heard of buffalo. They were really close and some were lying in the water but the most beautiful was the large flock of cattle egrets floating around them (settling and flying up over and over) like snow flakes. The cruise ended with more than fifty elephants on the shore and three of the bulls swimming. At this point the client said “You could have warned me! I thought we were going out on a small dam and would be lucky to see a few hippo – This reminded me of Kariba”.

I was on my way out of the game reserve in the late evening with storm clouds gathering – awesome light – when there thy were, perfectly displayed in an open glade and looking right at us – two black rhino. One was a very large male and the other a female he was very interested in.  The guests asked if we could get closer (we had been very close to some white rhino earlier) and the bull showed them why not even before I cold explain. He put on a small display of bouncy aggression and then settled down again. We sat with them for about 10 minutes before they trotted of into the bush for some privacy

I arrived on the scene to late to know what happened but it looks as if the herd came into the water and something frightened them (possibly a fast moving speedboat) and the little one drowned in the resultant rush. As we approached the behavior was unusual in that the entire herd was standing in the water but not playing around – simply standing silently. I thought I saw something floating amongst them. I waited a while and when they moved of towards the shore I moved slowly closer until I identified the small blob as a three to six month calf.

That afternoon with another group of guests I found them again. This time they were kilometers away and moving fast – as if the wanted to put distance between themselves and the incidence. It was easy to see which female had lost the calf though (I knew anyway because one of my favorite young females was missing her first calf) because she kept turning around as if to return and the herd matriarch would gently turn her back the other way.

“There is a largish black dot on the shore down theeeeer - we can go for a look if you like but in this getting back may be a bit uncomfortable - I think it may be a hippo out grazing because of the low light.”

A little later

“sorry not a hippo - probably a buffalo but we are now so far that we may as well continue”

A little later

“Hey that buffalo has horns on its nose - a white rhno”

Finaly - with great excitement

“It’s a blakkie”

By which time I think that the guests had lost all trust in their guides abilities.

The storm was magnificent with great flashes of lightning and huge rolling thunder cracks combined with rain so heavy one could hardly see the road - it took us about half an hour to do the last eleven kilometers of the drive to the hotel in an open safari vehicle. Luckely I was just happy to see the first good rain of the season and the guests were blown away by the sheer scale and magnificence of a real african storm.

The storm was magnificent with great flashes of lightning and huge rolling thunder cracks combined with rain so heavy one could hardly see the road - it took us about half an hour to do the last eleven kilometers of the drive to the hotel in an open safari vehicle. Luckely I was just happy to see the first good rain of the season and the guests were blown away by the sheer scale and magnificence of a real african storm.