An unforgettable week in the Timbavati

Posted on 21 June 2011

So after a couple of posts here on the Getaway Travel Blog, a few of you might be tired of my face already; the bad news is that I want to try and get a weekly update blog going that will chronicle my life in the bush. So with that in mind, here is the first of my weekly updates!  If you are not a fan of reading, stop here and rather just enjoy the slide show of photos above … but if you longing for the bush and need some motivation to organise a return visit, then carry on reading!

I had been off duty for a week working on a coffee table book, which was all well and good, but I was getting a bit tired of hearing about all the other guides sightings, so when I was unexpectedly allocated some new guests, I was not all that upset.  Little did I know that this week of drives would be one of my most enjoyable stints ever!

Two of my guests were repeat guests to the lodge, and when I asked them if there were any animals in particular that they would like to see, they mentioned our dominant male leopard, Argyle male.  That would have been a tougher request to fulfil was he not sitting with a kudu kill a couple of kilometres from the lodge.  After seeing a herd of elephants, and while enjoying some impalas grazing near a large dam close to the leopard’s kill, we spotted this brute of a leopard returning to his kill.  When we got around to him, he had already been chased up the tree by two hyenas; clearly taking exception to this, Argyle male peed on one of the hyenas.  I found this rather amusing, but thought it was just coincidence.  That was until another hyena arrived under the tree and the leopard woke up and peed on her as well!  A leopard with a sense of humour – I like it!

The next morning we awoke to a herd of buffalo in front of the lodge, and spent the first part of the morning with them before going to check on the leopard.  He had finished his kill, but was still up in the tree with the hyenas close by.  He soon leapt down and ran off towards the dam wall where he spent the rest of the morning sleeping off his fat belly.

After a nice herd of elephants and good general game, we just bumbled about as our trackers followed up on tracks for lions that we were sure were for the famed White Lions of the Timbavati – and a pride that had been absent from our area for almost four months.  Late in the morning, they located them, but as breakfast was calling, we decided to leave the lions for the afternoon – and what a good choice that would be!

We took our time getting to the lions, hoping to get them as they woke up in the late afternoon, and occupied ourselves with the usual impala, as well as some warthog and a herd of photogenic zebras kicking up some dust.  Making our way through a herd of elephants, we arrived to find the Xakubasa Pride, with their two white lionesses, sleeping in the riverbed.  They didn’t sleep for long and soon stalked after one of the innumerable flocks of guineafowl in the area at the moment.  Failing that, they decided to stalk one another and began playing around as the daylight faded, really illustrating to us how much different they were from their tawny pride members.  We followed them on the hunt, and even without spotlights in the twighlight, we could easily keep track of the movements of the white lions.  We left them to it as it got later, and watched them disappear down a game path; less than a minute later, while sitting in the same spot, a herd of twenty-odd elephants came ambling along the same path – not a bad way to spend an afternoon with some old friends.

Day three of this super week saw us head south to see some more lions; this time the Machaton Pride and their cubs.  Thirteen lions all-in-all (one male, three females and nine cubs), the pride lazed about in the dry riverbed, just a few metres from the remains of a large buffalo cow they had brought down the morning before. Fat-bellied cubs waddled from mother to mother, and a few cubs played around with the buffalo’s ear, while other’s fed next to a tolerant father.  It was such a typical African scene except for the fact that the grey clouds were building around us and we headed back to the camp.  We arrived late, again, but traffic is sometimes ridiculous; especially when it’s a beautiful female leopard walking down the road!  With the luck we were having, it almost didn’t surprise me that we found the beautiful Kuhanya (meaning “survivor”) just before we arrived back at the lodge.

The clouds only amounted to a short-lived downpour, which is not really the norm in the middle of winter, but welcomed none-the-less, especially as my guests and I managed to miss it!  The dark clouds and wonderfully coloured rainbows made for magnificent scenes around the Timbavati.

Our mission for that afternoon was rhino, but for once we were out of luck, and had to ‘settle’ for some nice elephant bulls drinking at a waterhole, a special sighting of a rare side-striped jackal, giraffe, zebra, impala, and then on the way back to the camp, an entertaining small-spotted genet that almost fell out of a tree while scratching itself!

The following day, we were looking for all things white – white lions and white rhinos.  The day got off to a good start when we had a breeding herd of elephants drinking at a waterhole near the camp.  We then proceeded into an area where the white lions had been eating a zebra yesterday.  We had a stroke of luck and found them walking through the bush not far from where their last tracks had been seen, and got to spend part of the morning watching them before they fell asleep in a thicket.  As the morning warmed up, so did the other sightings, and we saw elephant bulls, a large breeding herd of buffalo, zebra, kudu, giraffe, impala, baboons, waterbuck and a hippos.

That afternoon saw us still searching for the elusive white rhino, and we checked all the spots where we occasionally see them, but the only tracks found left the property.  With just elephants for company that afternoon, I closed down for a sundowner and tried to warm myself up as winter seemed to arrive with vengeance that afternoon!  Sadly I wasn’t allowed to drink the bottle of red wine, so settled for a coke light instead.  But perhaps had I drunk it a bit slower, the rhinos would have come to me!  After seeing some elephants nearing the water in the dark, we packed up and headed off, where not 100m from the waterhole we bumped into two rhinos!  Not sure who got more of a fright – them or us – but they moved off into the bush, and as it was already dark, we didn’t follow them.

Before my guest’s last morning, we had ticked off 27 mammal species – not bad, but not yet the 28-species target I had set for us!  Fortunately 10-minutes into the last drive, I ticked off species 28, the blue wildebeest!  Sadly, on a rather chilly and very windy morning, that was one of the highlights for us.  We still managed to see some nice hyena, impala, giraffe, zebra, bushbuck, hippo, waterbuck, a large crocodile and an impala that was sleeping comfortably under a bush, albeit without its internal organs – unfortunately the leopard that caused this could not be found…

Well, at least not until I followed up in the area that afternoon with a new set of guests.  After seeing some good general game, and taking it easy on our first afternoon, we headed towards the kill and found a nervous young male leopard moving off with the carcass.  We kept our distance and he lay flat in the grass trying to hide; it thus shouldn’t have surprised us when he jumped out and gave us a mock charge before going to settle down behind a small bush about 30 m away.  Eventually he dragged the kill off. We were about to try follow him when a relaxed female leopard popped into view!  It was Mbali, and she had no doubt just lost her kill to this much larger male.  She went and ate what scraps remained before following after the male leopard’s scent trail and led the other guides to a tree where he had hoisted the kill.

Our day ended with around 200 buffalo coming to drink at the dam that we had chosen to use for our own drinks.  In the nearly-full moon, we watched as they surrounded our vehicle and quenched their thirsts – it was so wonderfully atmospheric I almost didn’t want to leave!

We awoke on Saturday morning, not realising what an amazing day it would turn out to be, and the first part of the morning definitely didn’t suggest it would be so good!  It was a quiet start until we found a small herd of elephants feeding near the Nhlaralumi Riverbed, and after they moved down into the riverbed, we jumped ahead to go have coffee on a rocky outcrop, below which the elephants were bound to come and drink, and sure enough, they did just that!  We spent a magical hour with them; my guests and I all sitting on some rocks no more than 30 m from the elephants as they dug in the sand, drank water, and fed on the sedge.  I don’t know if my guests appreciated what a privilege it was to be able to view elephants on foot like that and not have them be aware of us, or if they were, to pay us no attention at all!

The most magical part of the day came on our bushwalk, where unbelievably, we ended up standing in the middle of a dry riverbed next to a remaining puddle of water, and to our left we had a large male giraffe approaching the water no more than 15m away, and on our right, we had a hippo doing the same, but at about 50m away.  It was surreal, and without doubt the most profound moment of my guiding career.  The giraffe, normally an extremely nervous animal when it comes to drinking, bent down and drank as if we were not even there, totally comfortable with our presence in his world.  It was only when the hippo noticed us and gave us a snort from 25m away that the giraffe moved off, and then so did we.

The guests couldn’t stop raving about the day’s experiences so far, and we hadn’t even seen the usual ‘highlights’ like lions or leopards.  I was almost worried that the afternoon would be a disappointment.  Thankfully, the animals had other ideas.  Knowing what was waiting in the south, I headed straight down there, but I had a tough choice ahead of me: wild dogs or lions?  Seeing both was not a problem, but which ones would be the better choice to spend the active part of the day with?  I delayed my decision for a while, and enjoyed nice giraffe and elephant sightings before choosing to go and try relocate the wild dogs first.  It didn’t take long before we found the pack moving along the road, but they soon settled down as the sun started sinking in the sky.  We had a nice view of them, but shorter than I normally like for wild dogs (but then, for me, even two hours with wild dogs is too short!).  I drove the few hundred metres to where the lions had been seen in the morning, and we found them resting in an open clearing in the last light of the day; it was the Machaton Pride with their cubs in attendance, I knew that we had made the right choice.

In picture perfect light, the cubs came over and rubbed up against mom and began grooming her.  For 10 minutes, all you could hear were shutters going wild until the light faded – but this was just the beginning of the excitement.  The pride spotted some impalas and began to stalk them.  At first it appeared that they had lost interest, but when we caught up with them, two lionesses seemed to be stalking something invisible to us, and a second later they both charged in and grabbed an impala that must have just been lying unmoved in grass for some unfathomable reason!  With only the bigger cubs in attendance, the seven lions all did their best to get a bit of the meal, but the fighting sounds drew in the little cubs from over 500 m away, and they too came to join the feeding frenzy!  What a sight to behold, and what a fantastic way to end off one of my most memorable days in the bush.  Well, truth be told, that wasn’t the end, and we still saw a beautiful (albeit sleepy) female leopard and a herd of elephants on the way back to the lodge.

Sunday, ‘the hangover day’, surely couldn’t match what we experienced the day before … but that’s the beauty of the bush, you just never know!  The morning saw us still needing to find rhinos, and after a nice herd of buffalos, we went to see a herd of four rhinos that had been found.  The rest of the morning was filled with hippos, giraffe, kudu, waterbuck and other general game, but didn’t quite have the excitement of the day before.  Surely the bushwalk would also be a ‘disappointment’ compared to yesterday’s one.  Well it would have been were it not for the fact that we found a leopard sleeping up a tree and watched as she climbed down and casually wondered off across a small clearing.  Man, our luck was seemingly endless!

The afternoon had excitement of a different sort; and that involved being amongst a herd of overly-boisterous young elephant bulls as they fought with one another, trumpeted like there was no tomorrow, and did their best to intimidate us through some playful mock charges!  We then opted for some quieter time spent with a herd of kudus and zebras before enjoying our last sundowner in the bush.  Although we tried to find some lions on the way home, our endless luck did appear to have run out.  Oh dear.

One morning drive left and only white lions, a pack of hyenas, a relaxed troop of baboons, male lions and cheetahs to see.  Easy.  Within the first hour we were sitting watching a clan of nine hyenas eating a kudu that they must have killed in the early hours of the morning.  Such wonderful animals, they never get the attention they deserve.  Well, as there was not much else happening this morning, they got our full attention as we watched their antics around the kill for some time.

Trying to locate a leopard that had been calling in the area, I spotted tracks that I thought were from a leopard.  Petros, my tracker said, ‘No, mpho’, and then hesitantly uttered the words ‘these are cheetah tracks’, almost not wanting to believe what he was saying. We started tracking, but weren’t having a great deal of luck in the rocky areas, and decided to leave the tracks and drive ahead and check with the vehicle.  It was then that another guide called to tell me he had found the cheetah, not too far from where I was, and five minutes later I pulled in to join him as one of the world’s most beautiful creatures walked through the bush – bush that, in the Timbavati, is not all that conducive to good cheetah sightings.  But who cared, I was looking at one now!  However, it was difficult to focus on her, as I couldn’t stop shaking my head in disbelief about just what an amazing few days my guests had experienced!

While watching the cheetah sitting on a mound surveying the area, a herd of 30 elephants arrived to drink at a nearby waterhole – so now my neck got even sorer from swinging from a herd of elephants on the left to a cheetah on the right!  Why couldn’t all sightings be like this?

Heading back to camp for the last time, I was just in awe of what I had seen, and what I had experienced over the last few days.  I know the guests felt the same, but it was their first taste of the bush – I have been doing this for the last four years and I was still moved by everything that we had experienced together.  It was thus with reluctance that I too had to pack my bags and head back to Johannesburg for a week’s leave – I am very worried about what magical moments I am going to miss out on!

Guess it gives me something to look forward to when I return next week though …

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