SUNDAY 18 AUGUST - PART 3/3 - NKAYA PAN TO TAMBOTIE.
Headed straight up H1-3, did a left turn into H7 and then the S106 detour as the H7 road here is still closed after the January wash away. BC was right, this road was in shocking condition. Joan and I call this type of road a T.W.. Try and work that out.
Still at a Nkaya Pan - it only took 10 minutes from the time of the kill for the vultures to start arriving.
While waiting to see if anything further would develop we watch two young warties wrestling.
At the Sweni River bridge we saw these buffalo having a dip.
Nothing much more until we got to Nsemani Dam. We were on the left hand side of the road looking for the resident leopard but everybody else was parked on the right hand side. We moved to our right to get to the left hand side of the road facing on coming traffic and could not work out what people were looking at. Eventually we spotted this male lion fast asleep among the bushes. We were quite excited as this was the closest we had seen lion since we arrived. We waited a while but he was sound asleep and not going anywhere soon.
At Rabelais Pan Joan got a lovely shot of a fish eagle who posed ever so nicely for us before flying off into a tree. He was sitting there staring into a small puddle. Quite what he was looking at we could not see.
On the S106 just beyond Rabelais Pan there is small dry river with a donga on the right hand side with water in it. Flutterby I think this is where you shot your video of the ellie trying to get into the road and the responding sound effects from within your car.
We were lucky enough to see ellies drinking and buffalo lying around.
Back on the H7 an ostrich and a southern ground hornbill.
After checking at Tambotie we made a braai and the waited for the nightly raider. Spot on time he came waddling up the path from Tent 3 towards us. Sorry about the quality of the pics but my little pocket camera does not like night photography.
He walked right past us, ok we were a little bit higher than he was as we were on the deck of the tent, and headed for our dustbin.
We were amazed at the ease with which he opened the so-called baboon/honey badger proof dustbin lid. I was clicking away but through the small screen I could not see what I was photographing and the flash was firing like a machine gun. The honey badger suddenly jumped out of the dustbin, looked at us, nodded his head up and down a few times and then ran towards us at a pace that belies his size. Joan and I both scrambled for the door at the same time, me trying to push her out the way and she was pushing me out the way as I had bolted the door shut.
Try and open a bolted door when you are in a serious case of panic mode with visions of those claws ripping into your tender legs. We eventually we got the door open, charged in, slammed the door shut, and collapsed into each others arm shivering and shaking with excitement or was it fear? How we both squeezed through that door at the same time we will never know. In the meantime the honey badger had run under our tent and not onto the deck to attack and ravage us. It was only after an hour that we started to laugh about the situation and collapsed into bed with the adrenalin rush starting to slow down.
NEXT: Morning - H7 to breached bridge +- 18 kms and return. S106 to Rabelais Pan and return. S140 for +- 10km and return.
Afternoon - H7 to breached bridge and return - not much else to do.
This episode is going to be in four parts due to the variety of sightings.