AW Photo Competition Safari Winner Trip

[Richprins]

[Penga Ndlovu]

[iNdlovu]

OK, I have a habit of sitting quietly in the dark and having a smoke before going to bed at night. No exception on this night and I have to say it was hilarious watching RP and Sprocky head off to their respective tents. It looked as if they were stepping over a low wall with every other footstep, then they'd straighten up, shoulders back, peer into the darkness and take a new sighting, soon to veer off coarse, only to repeat the process.
I listened for a while to make sure Sprocky didn't deviate from the wooden walkway again, but he seemed to have the hang of it by then.
My tent was about 15 meters away from RP's and sometime during the night he obviously was having a nightmare. This was evident in the fact that he sang a bar of one of Leachies songs in his sleep. At least I think it was him, but could have been the lone hyena circling the camp.

Anyhow a good night's sleep was had by all and on emerging the following morning (Sunday) low and behold, the camp to myself. I wondered down to the fire and using bits of bark that had become shrapnel every time Sprocky threw a tree from the woodpile down to the fire, I coaxed some life from the glowing coals. A dull glow in the east revealed an overcast morning, but owing to the insulating effect of the low cloud, the morning was warm.

I had not even had a chance to put the kettle on the fire when Sprocky appeared from amongst the bushes and proceeded to fill the kettle whilst I got the ingredients for the first coffee of the day bemoaning the fact that I had forgotten to buy rusks. The two of us sat there silently staring into the flickering flames, the only other sounds were from a fight between two old tusker warthogs in RP's tent.
The now usual discussion took place, wondering if the teaches would be appreciative of a game drive, we should have known better....no way, it was their sleep in morning so Sprocky and I climbed aboard the truck and as quietly as possible headed out of the gate. We would leave Mary to rouse those two on her arrival at camp.

[iNdlovu]

Instead of the usual right hand turn on exiting the camp gate we decided to hang a left. New morning, new territory. After crossing the river which flows past Sprocky's tent we discovered a new road under construction. The bush had been bulldozed aside, but not completely cleared. Following the bank of the river this "road" twisted and turned through thick bush, but being intrepid explorers we were eager to see what it would lead us to.
On negotiating a particularly sharp turn, Sprocky let out this blood curdling scream, his head fell back, as he tried to assume the fetal position whilst sitting up. This man was in pain. Being the cautious driver that I am, I completed the turn before jamming on brakes, not wanting to cause an obstruction to other traffic on a corner, pulled into the emergency lane and tried to make sense of his writhing and screaming. It took the promise of some medicine back at camp before I finally got a semi-coherent reply.
It seems that I had driven over the end of a branch which had then bounced up, wip-lashing Sprocky's left arm just above the elbow. Copious amounts of blood flowed so I lit a smoke and peered into the bush whilst he sorted himself out, my biggest concern was how he was going to pour his medicine when we got back to camp.

[Penga Ndlovu]

Hehehehehe.

[Sprocky]

I am suitably impressed with your memory Boss. A few things are lacking though.

The Boss was on a high being the first one up for a change, so he decided that we need "skop" in our coffee. Good thing we did this, as little did we know, we would need serious internal heating during the morning drive. I have no photos of our morning drive, so I will leave it to the Boss to explain the course of events. I will just fill in the gaps in his memory. -O

I still claim he drove over that log intentionally. When it hit me all I could think of was, I've been hit, stray bullet from hunters, going to die.

Oh yes, Boss, please explain to them the behaviour of almost all the animals that morning.

[Flutterby]

Oh dear, another mortal injury!! You guys were falling like flies!!!

[iNdlovu]

Nothing better in the early hours of the morning to have a skop coffee with rusks around the fire before getting going for the day, but allas...no rusks. There was no shortage of skop however and on Sprocky's urging we tried a few different variations.

Once Sprocky realized that he hadn't been shot nor lost too much blood we continued on our way towards the area where the single shot had been fired the day before that brought the buff down. It was interesting to see the reaction of the game in that area. Everything took off for the horizon on spotting us. It was not just as if they ran off a ways and then stopped to keep us in sight, but dashed headlong for the distance, not stopping at all. One single shot can cause that reaction.

Anyhow we continued on our way and noticed a considerable drop in temperature, I at least had a light jacket with me, but Sprocks was still in shorts and a T-shirt. We pulled up at one of the many dams on the farm when the heavens opened. The rain came pelting down...not too pleasant on an open game drive vehicle. Sprocky was trying to protect his camera under his shirt, my glasses got so misted up that I had to peer over the top of them and we made a b-line for Phiniass's house where he had a large car port that would make a great shelter.
Unfortunately with Sprocky's mishap I had got completely turned around and thought we were heading south west, but a while later ended up on the cut line on the eastern border of the farm.
From here I was OK and then decided to head for camp. The photographers shirt was soaked and his jaws were clattering away, lucky his teeth didn't fall out.
Whilst driving along the cut line we saw what looked like a fair sized log in the distance, but on getting nearer, realized it was an animal lying on the track. A young Nyala, obviously killed by some predator, it's body cavity ruptured but nothing eaten....strange

We continued on and arrived back at camp, soaked through and frozen. Soon thereafter the rain stopped and we managed to convince the two teachers to join us on a new game drive. I wanted to go up to the farm headquarters to check where we should leave the vehicle when we left.

The head ranger cleared up the puzzle re the dead Nyala, apparently some Wild dog had just brought the Nyala down when the hunters disturbed them and the dogs moved off and there is no way that they would return to the kill.
We decided to head back to that area to see if we could spot the dogs and were slowly moving up a hill when RP yelled "dogs". Sure enough there they were mostly hidden by the thick bush, but we all got a glimpse of them as they vacated the area. The moral of this story is that searing your eyeballs with a square sun helps your game spotting. He had been almost useless on the days before. Well done Rich, excellent spot.

The time was moving on and we headed back to camp to start packing up, load the vehicles and hit the highway. Plans changed a bit when RP got into the kitchen. Out came the eggs, toast, mushrooms and sausages and he produced a fine brunch in no time at all.

Well satisfied, we loaded up and left camp. Now we had agreed to return the truck to farm head quarters and so made up a little convoy of Leachy and I in the Landy, RP driving the truck and Sprocky bringing up the rear in the Stead.
I'm sure Sprocs has a few pics to add to this episode, so I'll give way to those, but will add my thanks to the 3 stooges and especially to all of you guys who have visited this TT and encouraged the telling of all this foolishness. It was a superb weekend with great, although mad, company and I would do it again at the drop of a hat.
Until the next one

[Penga Ndlovu]

This sure was a mad adventure.
Glad I was able to follow it.

[Sprocky]

That is pretty much how the rest of the day went. Still one or two details that the Boss forgot about.

When I am at home this evening I will post the shots of the last day.