Africa Wild

Hi guys

Did my first trip to Madikwe this past weekend. My first experience of not being able to drive myself, but was well worth it. We stayed at Mosethla Bush Camp, a eco lodge in the middle of the park. No electricity, and long drops all the way, but was a great experience. The experience is centred around the game drives (4hrs in the morning and afternoon/evening), which suited me fine. The sightings were good, and off-road driving is not a problem in the park, so you get nice close encounters with all the animals. They also limit all sightings to a 3 vehicle max, so no crowding and fighting for positions.
Negatives: Because there is a 3 vehicle limit at sightings you may find yourself waiting in line to see some of the more popular predators. This just feels wrong. Our guide did her best to avoid this, and would rather do a detour and approach the sighting from a different route, but you still end up waiting for your spot.
They limit the amount of vehicles on the road for each lodge based on the amount of people allowed at the lodge. So in other words our lodge (18 person capacity) were only allowed 2 vehicles on the road at any time. If the lodge is full, the vehicle can become crowded. I can’t imagine myself and General Gumpie sitting in one row….
Any vehicle out after dark is only allowed one spotlight. The guides obviously do a good job, but you can only view one side of the vehicle at a time, and you get the feeling that you are missing out on the nocturnals. We had very few sightings after dark. The lodge did however have a resident brownie and civet which visited every night, so I got a bit of a fix.

One thing that sounds really cool, and that I am hoping to do (if the funds are available) is a trip to the lodge in winter when the wild dogs are denning. The guide said that they do a special drive where you head out to the den first thing in the morning, and sit and wait for the dogs to return to the den, and watch the interaction between them and the pups. I’ve never seen wild dog puppies, so I think this must be nice.

On the subject of the wild dogs. I’m not sure if it was reported elsewhere on the forum, but Madikwe lost around 18 dogs due to rabies. Only one pack of 6 dogs left in the park. The entire northern pack was wiped out. Sad news !

Anyhow – hope that helps any prospective visitors.

Thanks for that jb! It sounds frustrating but also good that they limit the number of vehicles.

The wild dog trip sounds great!

Thanks for the heads up jb72, to pay that sort of money and have that limitation and the amount of people on a trip does not work in my books either, as a photographer at those sightings one can get there I would want to spend at least a couple of hours at a sighting with limited amount of people on the game drive vehicle

PRWIN wrote:Thanks for the heads up jb72, to pay that sort of money and have that limitation and the amount of people on a trip does not work in my books either, as a photographer at those sightings one can get there I would want to spend at least a couple of hours at a sighting with limited amount of people on the game drive vehicle

Exactly - I can obviously only comment on the lodge we stayed at. If you are willing to pay the price I am sure you can have a vehicle all to yourself at some of the bigger lodges. The camp manager at Mosethla told me that they do photographer drives, but it is a whole group who book out at least 8 beds, and then have a vehicle for themselves. Then again, if you go in the low season, and midweek you may have the vehicle all to yourself anyway.
Furthermore it is one thing sitting at a rhino or bird sighting for hours where there is no “queue”, but at the predator sightings there are definitely other vehicles waiting in line, so you won’t be able to stay for hours….

Hi jb

Sounds as if there is a certain limitation in movements and also the opposite. If you do not want to go out for 4 hours? I'd better not go there

Lisbeth wrote:Hi jb

Sounds as if there is a certain limitation in movements and also the opposite. If you do not want to go out for 4 hours? I'd better not go there

Hi Lisbeth

That’s the problem with having to share your drive with other people. If you were the only person on the drive you could do anything you want, but unfortunately that is hardly the case. They do stop halfway through the drive for drinks & snacks, but ultimately they stay out at least 4 hours. You can always stay in the camp. The birding in camp was excellent, and there were 3 dugga boys never far from camp (sometimes inside) to keep you entertained.

Like most of these luxury lodges (I assume) catering for tourists, a lot of the drives revolve around finding the big 5. Luckily we were 6 South Africans that go to the bush fairly often on our vehicle, so we weren’t too fussed in finding the big sightings. We were happy searching for birds, and one of the gentleman was into geology, so I got a few good lessons on rocks. The guide will do whatever you request, as long as all the guests are in agreement…..
It was quite interesting though one morning when we found some lion tracks to see how the guides go about finding them. They track the lions through the veld in the vehicles, and drive wherever they want to try and find them.

Thanks for this, jb!

How does one get to pee on these drives, and is booze allowed?

Richprins wrote:Thanks for this, jb!

How does one get to pee on these drives, and is booze allowed?

Booze not allowed on the vehicle, but they stop for sun downers, and you can force as many as you want down in that time! Can obviously pee when they stopped, but judging by some of the close encounters we had with ele's that might be too late for some....

Info about Madikwe here

https://africageographic.com/stories/ma ... agtravel-1