Northwards along the Lebombo Mountains to Pafuri.

[Pumbaa]

Some very impressive grey ones, 100ponder

[Alf]

Stunning buffalo bull

Stunning tusker

[Flutterby]

Some lovely promising tuskers there.

[Lisbeth]

[Bushveld Jock]

Glad to see the Balule bridge was fixed by 2015. Its a wonderful little camp and certainly to spend some time there again. Looks like you had some great elephant sightings and looking forward to the Shingwedzi part.

We camped there in March - April and due to lots of rain fall in the week we arrived very few sightings of the big guys. Only baboons along the river bed, but just before we left they came out again.

[100ponder]

Yes - continuing with this trip report got delayed too much but, now that we reached our safari base camp in Shingwedzi, the problem is how to report our experiences !

What-ever we do, we will only be able to scratch the surface as this safari turned out way beyond our expectations.

We will report an abbreviated view of experiences covering an area at a time. We visited each and every area on several occasions and it is impossible to single out any specific areas other than Klopperfontein. Our times there were too enjoyable to just glance-over.

So, shortly we will start off with " The Red-Rocks road ".

Gerrie.

[Lisbeth]

Gerrie

[Flutterby]

[nan]

I'm ready too

[100ponder]

This area upstream of the Shingwedzi camp is most interesting due to its wonderful bush scapes that awaits our eyes around ever curve the dusty tracks makes along the river.



Here the elusive Nyala can be seen in the brisk morning air -



and as we glide along at idle speed Lettie happend to glance up a lone standing tree to see this spotted cat a good ten meters above ground and no matter what, this fat bellied cat would not lift his head for a portrait photo :-



and tree squirrels would dash across the dusty track and up a mopani shrubs where they will paused to challenge us -



Later-on as we silently approached the Tsonga lookout point we surprised this francolin on the picnic table -



Here the soft footed will see many a lizard amongst the rocks -



. . . and as we let the car slowly free-wheel down the slope with engine switched-off, we spotted a interesting looking LBJ on the right-hand side of the road and stopping to try and locate it some ten meters into the shrubs we also noticed these elephant on the left-hand side -



. . . the herd bull on the left was the only bad behaving elephant we ever encountered on this safari, he took exception to us stopping for a mere bird, trumpeted once and did a mock charge stopping some eighty meters from us. We did not pay too much attention to his behaviour and seeing the LBJ we were interested in, moving further down the road and still keeping some ten meters into the bush, we let the car roll forward ( still with engine switched-off ). Some three hundred meters further we stopped again and Mr. bad-attitude out of our minds started looking at the LBJ when, suddenly there was a sound of breaking bushes and a loud "Furrrrrr" and looking over our shoulders we saw Mr. bad-attitude running towards us ! ! Car got started quickly and off we went forgetting about the LBJ. . . .

In the midday heat we would sometimes glide along at walking pace through gigantic trees and on numerous occasions found giraffe being dwarfed by the size of the trees under which they were seeking shelter from the fierce sun -



And then once, as we crawled along back to camp Lettie whispered "stop, engine off" - we sat listening to soft squeals and rustling dry leaves until Lettie noticed them, some mouse size dwarf mongoose pubs wrestling like puppy dogs here right next to the car. They were so entranced in their frolicking that they eventually rolled down the slope to the river bed below without ever knowing of our presence !



Thus passed our excursions to Red Rocks - heaven !