Our last morning game drive and bad luck

May 4 our last day at Kirkman’s Camp

Joel wanted to leave early to see the sunrise.

We were tracking the leopard we had seen sleeping yesterday.

Joel (on the left) and Jerry tracking the leopard. These guys were amazing.

In our search we came across a small pride of lions and a group of three rhinos.

During this outing we had some bad luck. First our truck’s transmission went from 4 wheel drive to only 2 wheel drive and we almost got stuck again in a dry river bed. On the way back to camp for breakfast, we got a flat tire. Joel blamed the bad luck on the pink hat he had to wear (see photo above). If a ranger needs help to get out of being stuck he has to wear a pink hat until all the guests he is driving have checked out. One of the couples had just joined us that evening so he would have to wear it for at least three days.

Here ends the blog. I am writing this last post while we wait for our flight to joelLondon.

It was a trip of a lifetime.

Hippo night

The antelope above are waterbuck, sometimes called the toilet seat antelope because of the round white marking on the rump.

Joel and Jerry took us out of the truck and down to the river to see this herd of 13 hippo. They were very vocal and submerging and surfacing sometimes with a big splash. I have a video of their antics on the Blackberry Playbook. 

We stopped for our usual sundowner refreshments but were interrupted by a leopard party crasher. Joel told us to get in the truck and we left our bar behind and headed out to follow it. 

This is Sheila and Rita (from Vancouver) in our truck at the sundowner site with the full moon in the background.

Our last evening game drive

May 3 our last evening game drive

We started by going down to the river to see if we could find a female leopard called Scotia (not named after the province). At the river we found a herd of elephants on the other side. One seemed to have got left behind and he ran across the river to join his herd, trumpeting.

We found the leopard sleeping in the bush.

Cape Wild hunting dogs had been reported and we went on a search for them. On our search we came across two male impala fighting. Joel suggested they were just practising for the rutting season that was coming soon.

After tracking the dogs for some time, Sheila spotted them in a drainage ditch. They had captured a small nyala and were eating it. Our truck got stuck by the dogs and we had to call for help to get out. At one point a hyena tried to steal the dogs kill but the dogs drove it off. We say the hyena running away with a dog at its heels.

May 2 Spotted animal morning

On this morning's game drive we saw a giraffe and after tracking one leopard unsuccessfully through the bush we found a second male leopard marking his territory.

Sheila spotted this male giraffe grazing on tree leaves.

This is the second leopard we saw this morning. The first one we only caught a glimpse of before he disappeared into the bush. We never found him again.

After breakfast Joel took Rita and us on a bush walk near the camp. We say impala, waterbuck and warthog and a big rock monitor lizard. Joel also explained the plants the indigenous people used to use for stomach remedies, soap and toothbrushes.

Notice that Joel is carrying a rifle in case we encounter a large animal. Hec also tested the wind direction from time to time so he could tell if an animal would have detected us before we saw it through our scent.

It was a very worthwhile hour we spent with him and got our feet in the real African bush insteda of driving around all the time.

Kirkman's Camp is on the Sands River shown above at the site where we had our morning coffee break during the game drive.

This is a vervet monkey that hang around the deck where we eat our meals. This morning one monkey got away with a banana and two others stole two women's rusks right off their plates. As I write this post there is a monkey at our sliding door trying to open it.

Above is a southern yellow billed hornbill which also hangs around the camp.

Next game drive is at 4 pm after tea time. Our Japanese friend has left for home so we will have two new passengers on our drive.

Our first morning game drive

A knock came on our door at 5:30 to get us up for the morning game drive. After coffee and rusks we on the porch with the sun rising we took off.

We saw a new creature this morning. Diver is the English translation of its name because it dives away to avoid being eaten.

We encountered a second pride of lions and observed some dominance behaviour of the large male above over a younger male.

This is the largest elephant we have seen so far. He was also in mhust.

I caught an escaping Nyala in the photo above.

Jerry our tracker is on the left and Joel is on the right. Joel told us he was going to show us a strange and large white animal. It turned out to be a long table with white table clothes in the bush beside the river where our guides cooked us a magnificent bush breakfast.

While we were sitting down to eat our breakfast a herd of elephants crossed the river in front of us, close enough to hear them splashing.

At 3:30 today we will embark on our second drive for the day hoping to find the rhinos we 'saw' last night in the dark.

Our first game drive at Kirkman's Camp started about 3:30 in the afternoon. Joel id our ranger / driver and Jerry is our tracker who sits on a seat on the hood of the Land Rover. We are taking the game drives together with Nick and Rita from Vancouver and Inaki (not sure this is the correct spelling) from Japan who did his MBA at McGill.

There are many antelope here. Above is a heard of Nyala. There are actually four of these antelopes that graze on the lawn outside of our room. 

The highlight of the drive was encountering a lion pride resting on the bank of the Sand River. There are no lion cubs in this pride but Joel took us the next morning to a lioness' den where she is hiding two cubs. We didn't get to see them that day but Joel said we would return. 

Also we saw a hippo in the distance, only a black blob and two rhinos in the dark after the sun went down. We hope to see these on a future drive.

Sundowner drive

On our last evening at Addo we went on the sundowner game drive where we stop, get off the truck which is normally never allowed and have some drinks and snacks.

I got some my best shots of the antelope in the park on this drive.

Red Heartbeast

Kudu bull

Black backed jackal 

Eland

At the site where we were planning to have our snacks we can across Mel and Gibson again

We had to chose another site for our drinks and snacks or we might become a lion snack.

A view of the park at sundown from the hilltop where Mel and Gibson were sleeping.

Setting up for drinks and snacks and keeping a watchful eye for lion party crashers.

Headman our sundowner driver and guide.

The sun sets on our last night at Addo. An unforgettable experience.

Our last day at Addo

Our last day at the Addo Elephant Park consisted of a walk along the Discovery Path which is inside the fence for the Main Camp and Sheila was able for the first time get up close to some of the plants we have been seeing on our drives. We also got a close up view of the Armstrong fence that surrounds the park and the main camp.

The Armstrong fence was invented by a fellow named Armstrong to keep the elephants in the park and not raiding farmers fields. It was originally made from tramway rails ripped up in J'berg and Cape Town and used elevator cables donated by Otis.

After the walk we drove to Jack's Picnic Site where we had our lunch. We were visited by a number of birds including the one below which we saw many times siting on the top of bushes.

We came across this young male taking a bath.

The main event of this day was observing elephant behaviour.

He quickly left the water hole when this larger male approached aggressively.

At a different waterhole we watched this small group run past us apparently in some alarm.

On our way back to camp we came across this mother elephant and her calf who was nursing at the time of our arrival but the calf stopped before we could get our cameras out.

The mother elephant moved on to a mud wallow where she proceeded to throw mud up onto herself  with her trunk

Finally on the sundowner drive which will be the topic of the next blog post we came upon a herd of elephants with a big bull elephant in musht ?sp. that is sexually aroused. In the photo below he is off to check out which of his females might be receptive to his advances.

Beginning in Plett

We drove most of the day from Cape Town with a slight detour to Montagu where we had a delicious lunch of bobotie. We had thought to drive along the R62 through the desert or Karro but our GPS told us it would take too long so we adjusted and took the shore motorway to Plett. We had a wonderful dinner at The Fat Fish of local fish. The next morning we walked to the beach which was very close to our guesthouse (Anlin Beach House)

Robberg Nature Reserve as seen from Robberg Beach

Robberg Beach

Anlin Beach House, our terrace is on the right

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We left after a breakfast of homemade croissants and muesli for Addo. We passed the Storms River Gorge.

We arrived at Addo mid-afternoon through the southern gate and drove through the park to the Main Rest Camp in the northern part of the park

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Our first animal was the warthog then a zebra and our first elephant

Apparently there is an over population of warthogs. They brought in lions who are doing a good job on controlling the warthogs 

The lions don't like zebra unfortunately

There are elephants everywhere, this is the first one we saw.

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We also saw along the road a family of kudus, a heron and Cape buffalo.

Heron

Cape buffalo

kudu

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We arrived at the rest camp and the hillside we can view from our rondeval was full of elephants.

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If you look closely this lion is missing a canine tooth which will make it more difficult for him to kill his prey.

The next morning we took the sunrise game drive leaving at 6 am before the sun came up. Ryan (Sheila thinks his name was Brian) found us a pair of male lions

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Later we encountered a herd of elephants in the bush where they gather to keep warm overnight. There was a baby elephant amongst them but the adults seemed to want to protect it from being photographed.

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Baby elephant is to the right of the larger elephant

Later one of the passengers saw a family of yellow mongoose and several ostriches with zebra

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Ryan (Brian) was both our guide and driver in an open truck. He used a spotlight to spot wildlife, looking for the reflection from the back of their eyes. His spotlight is rated at 600 lumens.