Travel Snippets from Kruger, Swazi & KZN (5) TEMBE *

[Toko]

Day 18: Tembe Elephant Park

Langa's ladies

She left soon


... and Langa's soulmate -O

[Dewi]

Love the Lioness pics Toko.

Langa's soulmate looks familiar. Do you have a close up of her face so I can compare with my pics?

[Toko]

Day 18: Tembe Elephant Park

Dewi, it would be if you had seen her, as well! We could start an extra topic for the Lions of Tembe

... some more of Langa's soulmate -O

[Toko]

Day 18: Tembe Elephant Park

Langa walking down to meet his soulmate -O



















The Lion bridge -O

Musi swamp

Cattle Egret

[Mel]

Brilliant lion sighting!
Mrs Langa certainly is a beauty. Which can not necessarily be said about Langa himself.
His boys seem to have taken away the looks. -O

Does Langa's blonde offspring wear a collar?

[Toko]

Mel

Langa and his blonde son are boths collared There are lots of collared animals all over the KZN reserves and I wonder if this monitoring is really needed (or is it only another source of income attracting paying volonteers doing that so-called research )

Langa looks a little grumpy there, but imo he is a beautiful guy, too

[Dewi]

Great Lion pics again Toko.

They are in the exact place that we saw Lions two years ago.

[Toko]

Dewi, I think it's one of the few spots in Tembe where lions can hunt -O without getting stuck in a lemon rope or other thick bushy greeneries

However - I have seen lions there on all my trips to Tembe

[Mel]

Or are the collared to be easily tracked down by rangers who in turn
have a big cat to show to their paying customers.

Agreed, Langa does look a bit grumpy. Maybe his soulmate didn't work
the way she should have, in his opinion. -O

[Toko]

Mel, the monitoring is done by volonteers who drive around all day long and do a bit of monitoring and some "work" in between. They stay in a research camp far away from the lodge and the guides operating from the lodge don't have contact to them. They meet eachother only on the roads. It's for sure not done for tracking the big five for game drive guests. The Tembe guides don't know what the monitoring teams find and their guests do see almost never the wild dogs.

And the same thing is going on with the volonteers from WildlifeAct in uMfolozi and Mkhuze .

But one of the guides from the Tembe lodge is excellent: Patrick Mthethwa, he knows everything (birds, plants, soils, insects ...) and he can track lion, wild dog and rhino very well from the spoor. Great guy .