SARAH's SOUTH AFRICAN SAFARI (and trip to johannesburg)

on the way to africa (on the SIA flight), the first thing i notice is the sunrise.
WOW!!! and im really not kidding... WOW!!! on the plane, i had
a window seat and i could see this clear ball of orange as it slowly rose... *heart melts*


the photographs do not do justice...
initially, i thought perhaps it wouldnt be as nice when we were on land. (because i saw the sun rising from the plane) but when we landed, it was the same thing. no clouds in the sky and this great ball of brilliant orange slowly rising through the watercolour washed sky.. hahas. i dont quite know how else to explain it. the sky looks like washes of colours, closest to the horizon, there is a tinge of purple, then there is bit of red and orange, a streak of yellow, then it fades to blue and even a bit of green.

from there, we transfered to a smaller terminal. whereby we took a smaller plane that would bring us into the national park area where we'd be staying.




from our several plane rides (inclusive of what i presume will be my shortest flight ever, a 4 minute flight) [if you are really curious, what happens is that there is the big national park and about a third of it is privately owned 'park space' so to speak. the animals are free to roam anywhere within the private land and national park area. then in the privately owned land, people set up lodges, like the ones i visited, and earn a profit by offering safari tours/adventures/experiences. no poaching is legal in the area and our guides, or rangers as the are called, will take us on drives through the private lodge area as well as neighbouring plots, the management reach some sort of agreement as to who is and isnt allowed on their property, and the other rangers who use the same area can communicate through walkie talkies to report sitings of various animals etc.] anyway, back to the story... after our plane rides, we arrive at Inyati (our home for the next 3 days)

we are standing in front of our lodge. the entire area is fairly large, there is a common eating area, a swimming pool, a field in front of the eating area, a gift shop, several other lodges, a deck overlooking the nearby river (that was quite dry cos it was autumn and rainfall is less), anyway, basically, the lodge compound is quite big. we are briefed and then have a light lunch at the eating area (later on i have a few more pictures of the what the eating area looks like.


and then familiarise ourselves with the room.

this is a rough idea of what it looks like. in the background, there is one bed. my dad slept there. i slept on the other that is on the right (and out of the picture) and my sister took the smaller bed near where my dad was standing when he took that photo. the room was very interesting. in the sense that without switching on the air conditioning system, when it was hot outside, inside it was cool. and when is was cold outside, inside would be warmer. hahas. according to Sandra (the lady who handles the day to day running of the lodge) she says its in the way the house was built along with the materials..

after settling in, we got ready for our first game drive..

this is the general layout of our days. we have 2 game drives (the first in the morning from about 6am to 9am and the second from 5pm to 8pm) on these drives (at the ranger's discretion and also depending on the amount of activity in various locations) we are taken to see various animals. on the drives, we do stop for a short break/snack.
meals are as follows. morning tea/coffee at 5.30am (that is singapore 11.30am so it was quite all right) followed by breakfast at 9.30am or 10am after our first drive. we then seista till about 2pm whereby there are tribal drums to signal that it is time for more food (and i must say the food was quite yummy, western style mostly, although i did try impala meat [a native deer] as well as a maize paste [that tastes somewhat like chunky mashed potato but rather bland and unsweet] ) then our dinner is after our second drive. at 8.30pm we gather for dinner (because i am quite hungry by that point in time and want to get dinner over and done with so that i can wash up and sleep) but i suppose everyone else has the custom of having drinks before dinner (my sister and i figure that its because drinks are so expensive that we dont engage in this sort of behaviour) so dinner only starts at about 9pm (3am singapore time) hahas. and then we eat and talk and stuff. ya.
then we turn in and the cycle repeats the next day.

anyway. our first game drive. im quite excited. i am in africa on a safari. safari!! yay!!!
first thing that i notice, before all the animals is that this part of africa is a lot more lush than how tv makes it out to be. i imagined savanah, dry open plains. but no. there are trees and bushes everywhere (thus the place is called 'the bush') hehes.

so then on my first game drive.. i saw...

a monitor lizard

hippopotamus

a bird of some sort (but the camera kept focusing on the grass BEFORE the bird, i have a whole load of photos with the focus on the plants AROUND the animal but not the animal itself. hahas)

giraffe (and i managed to capture it cleaning its nose!! yes! hahas. yeap, giraffes clean their nose with their tongues)

a group of impala (type of deer)

2 cubs and 2 lionesses

the cubs are so cute, i thought they deserved another photo (ignore the beige patch which is my ranger's hand. and that black line down the centre of the picture is the land rover's antenna)

we sat and watched them for at about an hour, watching them play and interact. :)
and as the sun set,

we went up to a lookout point for our break.
and on the way, we saw
a young nyala (you can tell its young by its horns, fully grown, the horn will have three full spirals, this one has barely one full spiral)

and a crocodile (its a bit dark but its there)

and we bumped into..

this lion was sleeping in the midst of some shrubs so we couldnt really see him. but our guide was really good.

so we finally reach our rest point

backdropped against the setting sun... :) lovely.
and then my sister and dad find out about my obsession with trees.


































and as the sun sets, it starts to get a bit colder.. but tolerable. and because there is very little light pollution (unlike singapore) we could see the milky way in the vast night sky. (which reminds me very much so of the scene in 'the lion king' whereby simba, timon amd puumba are lying on their backs, staring at the sky and talking about what the stars mean to them.. hahas.) (if you have no clue what this scene is, go watch the movie!!!)

we carry on with our night drive and see a chameleon (tiny little bugger in a tree, have no clue how the spotter spotted it) and because it was a night drive there werent very many photos i took. but this night drive wasnt very eventful. yeahh..

and then head back for our first dinner!! (we are suffering slightly from jetlag, having dinner at 3am is a rather daunting task. especially when it is quite a grand affair. its an area the size of perhaps an average classroom. a circular space with a 2 metre high wooden pole fence going around with a maze entrance (whereby there is no actual door but you must turn a corner in order to get into the area) there is a bonfire in the centre of this eating area. with a row of table on both sides. one entire row is decked out in a buffet (at 3am in the morning, still on singapore time) and the other side is for all the guests and rangers to sit and eat. as its my first dinner there (and with such a wide variety of food) i do my best to try everything (i barely made it through) my sister and i shared a lot of stuff.

after dinner, we get back to our room, wash up then zzzzzzzzzz......

day 2:
getting up is not a problem, its like normal wake up time in singapore or maybe even later then if i had to go to work...



the mornings, i find are slightly colder. while looking out for animals, i secretly wait for the sun to come out so that i can warm up. hahas. and as much of a tea addict, i refrain from having too much tea to warm me up. because if not, i'll feel the need to go to the toilet but the thought of exposing my bottom to the african bush (and potentially get stung or bitten) is not a very pleasant thought. hahas.

this morning, we saw a group of elephants very contentedly eating right outside our lodge (as in literally within a 20metre radius of our lodge compound there were at least 20 elephants eating breakfast)




i dont think i can explain the sheer awe and grandeur you feel when you are sitting in the midst of a herd of elephants as they eat. to see them up close and to know that they are wild. to appreciate their wrinkly skin, watch them use their trunks to yank branches off a tree. everything. i suddenly appreciate and admire how free they are. they can walk wherever, eat whatever, and it doesnt matter. its not like in the zoo whereby they are confined to small spaces (at least relatively smaller spaces then these elephants) i think about all these things and feel so sad for all the animals back in the singapore zoo. and cant imagine what its like to live in that scenario. before, i always thought that the zoo was such a good place. but now... im not so sure. cos thinking about how much less space they have, makes me feel so sad. ok enough about that i suppose. cant really fully explain my thoughts at the moment.
just as we were about to drive off from the herd, we came across 2 young males play-fighting. i couldnt stop smiling (even though two elephants pretending to fight doesnt sound at all exciting. i just couldnt help but smile. how often do you get to see these sort of things up close and ACTUALLY be there) hahas.




for the people who have already seen the photos. you would have seen that the rover we were driven around in was not covered and we would be within at least a metre of all these various wild animals. i wasnt scared. i dont know if its because ever since i was little i was always very interested in animals or because i have watch various documentaries and know that i am quite safe in a vehicle. coming with 2, maybe 3, metres of wild elephants that could potentially charge at us and run us over, or within a metre of a lion, or with 5 metres of a leopard. im more awed than anything else. i just keep going 'wow!' over and over again. hahas.

so after the elephants, we saw several impala on the old air strip.

and then come across an old daggaboy (its a name for older buffalo who get really grumpy when they are old and have flies all around them perpetually from all the dirt and grim on their skin and are unable to scratch themselves) so this one was perhaps 5 metres from the edge of the lodge compound. and on it are several red-billed oxpeckers

dont ask what the birds are because i have no clue (except for the more distinctive ones)


then here is a picture of the african bush in the morning. even though the sun is bright and the glare seems quite strong, its still quite chilly, thus our jackets are zipped up.


my dad was quite nutty, he brought 3 cameras. my sister brought one. so amongst us, we had 4. dont know why.. hahas.


other than animals, i was always looking out for nice trees to take photos of. not that these trees are exceptionally nice.. but somehow i always feel that trees in a stand-alone composition is cool. and sometimes even the way trees "interact" so to speak. i really like it.







































after driving about for awhile, we spotted a marshal eagle on a tree quite far away. its tough to drive close to it cos then it would fly off. so we admire it from a distance. as we only had 2 sets of binoculars, my dad and sister were busy admiring the details of the eagle's feathers and distinctive head. whereas i just observed trees that were around us. hehes.
in the picture with the back of my sister's head, you can sort of make out the eagle in the tree to the right of her head. (click on the picture for a larger view if you like)

we pass more trees and a termite mound (although there are quite a number of termite mounds. nvm, just take photo.. hehes.


and then comes the highlight of this drive. we visit hyena puppies in a very very large deserted termite mound which they have taken over.


i do hope these puppies are still alive because when we were leaving, we got news that some of the lions in the area caught and killed a hyena they suspected to be these puppies mother. so without their mom, they wont survive. i know its life and that how it works but im such a sucker for happy endings..

we then move on to various birds. they do this in the morning to get warmed up by the sun.
and i managed to get a shot of them in flight (which is NOT easy, not easy at all)













































we were also lucky enough to find these zebra. cos zebra survive better in open plains and savannah. but there was this small herd here in the bush.
this one has a very distinctive marking on its shoulder.

then these two both had itches on their backs.

if you look carefully at their marking, there is a sort of "shadow stripe" in between stripes. thus these zebra are called shadow zebra.
then i started thinking about whether zebras are black with white stripes or white with black stripes. till now im not sure. hahas. but according to wikipedia, it says that zebra are BLACK with white stripes...

random photos
random tree

birds in flight

my dad

my sister

and jackpot! (birds in flight, a quite nice looking tree AND a zebra!!!)

then we stop at the bush coffeeshop. we take a few more photos and get a cup of coffee or tea (or 2 or three) but for me by this time, my bladder feels like its about to burst but i dont want to use the bush toilet cos there are snakes in the grass. so i just help myself to biscuits







































after the coffeeshop break. we drive around for awhile more but dont really see very many things. so we head back.
we cross the river that we can see from our lodge. (in the 2nd picture, the well kept lawn in the top right corner is the property of the lodge)



so then after setting some of our stuff down. we head out for a bush walk. our ranger, Rian (pronounced as Ri-aan not ryan), and spotter, Richard brief us on some precautions and then we begin.
nyala (with nicer horns but apparently more to grow.. rian just kept repeating that, although i thought horns like those already looked quite grand)


wildebeest (as its the bush, there arent a lot of them in the area) i think we saw all 3 wildebeest in the area that day. hahas. and also the lions in the area keep eating them.. thus only 3 remain.

elephant tracks (that is an elephant's hind leg print, its more teardrop shaped. whereas its front 2 feet are more circular in overall shape. angular in the front and curved at the back)

yellow-billed hornbill (think zazu in lion king, just that zazu is a red-billed hornbill. and yes, you usually find them hoping about on the ground although they do know how to fly.)

leopard tracks (these were old tracks)

Rian showed us a lot more stuff about trees and plants and stuff but i shant bore you (if you are already bored... too bad ;p)
so then after the bush walk we head back and siesta till lunch. then siesta somemore till its time for our evening drive. and we meet a herd of elephants again. and just watch them eat. hahas. we are so close to them that you can hear them fart. hahas.
but they dont smell. the air is very dry so it africa doesnt smell like the zoo.






this elephant looks really happy.

and this one sort is standing like that to show off it size cos it feels a bit threatened by our vehicle. although it really has nothing to worry about. its quite cute to see them display all these characteristics. especially because they are so small. hahas.

then this one saw the previous elephant's behaviour and tried to copy, so it kind of charged at us then changed its mind cos it didnt want to venture too far away from its mom.


so moving on from the elephants,



richard and rian heard some lions nearby
and were trying to find them
which wasnt easy when the grass 3 metres tall!!!

then finally, we get to a vantage point
we find two of the four lions that dominate the area.
they just killed a giraffe recently and are still very full thus the bulging bellies (which you'll see later)

we watch the lions for awhile


































but they arent going anywhere.
so we stop instead for our afternoon/evening tea break
and on the way, we come across this owl.


































































this owl was quite cool. its really large, if you cant tell from the photographs.

its the largest type of owl you'll find in the area. and our guide says we were quite fortunate to come across it.

and it basically just sat in the tree and didnt bother about us much.

and i was appreciating the tree that it was resting in..

and while sitting there, we also heard baboons calling a distance away.

so then we have our little break

and i appreciate another tree. hehes.

then we zip up as the night chill sets in. we carry on with our night drive.
we go back to check on the lions (it was really dark so the photos are blur, sorry)

but they still arent planning on going anywhere.

so instead, we drive around to look for other animals. (i have no photographs cos i cant use flash photography extensively as it'd scare the animals and leave me with nothing to see) then head back at about 9pm, wash up a bit, then have our dinner, then call it a night!

Day 3:
5.30am there is a knock on the door.
we drag ourselves out of bed (ok, not really "drag" but 5.30am does sound quite unearthly. but its singapore 11.30am), wash up
then have a cup of tea

or coffee

and a scone or two (or three) cos the scones ARE REALLY YUMMY.
this is the view from the common eating area
the short grass = safe lodge compound
tall grass = wild animals lurk (and over the course of our stay, there were buffalo and elephants that came right up to the edge of the tall grass to eat and just be animals. there were 2 hogs that walked around the compound too!! my sister and i had to creep away very slowly from them..)


and then we set off for our drive!

rian is looking for leopard tracks (we have so far been unable to find the leopards in the area although at night they have apparently been quite active)

storks in a tree





























a giraffe and wildebeest






















then here are a few pictures of the rising sun. its such a pity there is a glare, the photo doesnt capture the subtle details of the colours of the sky. how it looks like a watercolour painting, just colour over colour, subtly bleeding into one another. you see purple and green and blue and pink and orange, and cant quite determine where each starts and ends and its just so amazing and makes me smile.. :)


we drive around in circles for a bit and finally spot this rhinoceros. (not that a rhinoceros should be very difficult to spot but it was very quietly eating away)


then we get news that there are lions headed our way. and drive out to 'meet' them
i remember very clearly how we were driving up this path. and as we turned the bend, there they were! headed right for us!!


if you notice, the lions walk along the paths. they do so because it hurts their feet less (my sister and i were quite amused by this)
and these paths come about because elephants make these paths (by bulldozing their way through thick bush) then other animals start using these paths. and since these paths are frequented by animals, the humans follow these paths and clear them out and make them into roads..

as the lion passed just metres from us, i remember holding my breath and holding onto my sister very tightly.

this lion is sniffing the dung of a buffalo.

and we follow the lions for awhile, in hopes that these two are headed to re-unite with the other two..


too close for comfort?



i know that lions are ferocious killers but i think they look so cute (in their docile state)

also, i find them quite photogenic.
their colouration and everything.

i like the colours around their eyes, the smear of white.
its quite cool

their eyes catch the sunlight quite easily

in this photo, you can very clearly see its bulging belly. there is a quarter of a giraffe in that belly.

they usually hunt every 3 to 4 days, eating smaller impala etc. but a giraffe like that would keep them happy for a bit longer. and they also are rather opportunistic, if they see an easy kill, they'd take it too..

they passed a river (just beyond tall grass on the left)


and the hippopotamuses in the water (even though they were quite far away) were still scared of the lions and got a bit jumpy and moved to stay as out of sight as possible from the lions. (remember this location though, we come back here to have our tea break later)



past the old air strip



and after calling out to locate the others (2 of them are brothers while the other 2 are just buddies.. but i cant quite tell who is who, though richard and rian can..)




think this pic looks really cool.

turns out, one of the others has found a GIRL. and is sort of keeping her hostage.



whereas the other 2 are interested but dare not approach

thus there is a face off here...

so with a faceoff, they dont really do anything for awhile. so we head off
turns out, some researchers are in the area and doing a study on the leopards here.
and as part of their research they need to collect DNA samples from all the leopards in the area so as to trace the genes and parentage and relations of the leopards (which is something that the rangers are curious about too.. because there are some leopards whom they arent sure of who fathered them and stuff like that. so this study intrigued them too)
we managed to meet up with some of the researchers who were staking out a female leopard in a tree, waiting for her to come down so that they can dart her for a DNA sample.



thats the scientist. with the dart gun

but turns out darting wasnt as exciting as we all anticipated.
all they did was shoot a dart at the leopard, the dart kind of takes a chunk of flesh out from the leopard (containing its DNA) and then they pick up the dart and everyone is happy. except, perhaps the leopard who felt that it got some really nasty bite from a very angry bug.

i managed to capture this butterfly. there arent many around. but as we drive, we do see some..


then we find the elephants again (at least i think its the same herd that we keep seeing)
this one is a very young. born at a odd time of year. cos its some time in autumn when the environment is slightly harsher..

if you thought animals could not have unglam moments... hahahas

and this group had a lot of young ones so we werent able to get as close to them because the adults would move the young ones away..



we then move on to the river. where we see
a crocodile (i name this picture "grass before the crocodile" because the silly camera would not focus on the croc but on the grass instead)

a hippopotamus

a fish eagle (its not very clear though)

a goliath heron (that pretty much stayed in the same spot for the next 24 hours or so..)






















there were geese

a wagtail piper (at least i think thats what it was called)(it literally wags its tail sometimes when its standing still. my sister was very amused by it)

the same monitor lizard we saw on the first day..

male impala

and yellow billed hornbills.

buffalo

and some really cool looking duck (i think its a duck at least)

and a cool branch

thats it for our morning drive. quite interesting. saw a lot of animals.
we head back to the lodge, eat and siesta. the usual. but my sister and i decide to walk around a little bit. steering clear of any tall grass.
and while admiring a spider's web, we come across a warthog staring at us..
we freeze in panic. and then ever so slowly and ever so quietly inch our way back towards our lodge run in and shut the door tight.
the hogs later wander around the area...


that is the only exciting/scary thing that happens during this siesta
then we have our evening drive...
first up, a rhinoceros.

i suppose because it is so big and doesnt move much (although they can apparently reach a speed of 40km/h)
so as you can probably see (from the 2nd photograph) that is my sister taking a picture of the rhinoceros just 5, maybe 6 metres away from our vehicle.




we then head off to a small gorge (if thats even what its called) to have a look at bee-eaters. its a type of bird with VERY beautiful colours. emerald green mixed with blue and orange-yellow streaks at its eyes. its very pretty (if was my subject matter for my A level drawing and painting paper) they live in the little holes on the side of the cliff. and if you look very very carefully (sorry, i couldnt zoom any further) there are quite a few bee-eaters there at the entrances of their houses)

then we come across some monkeys. (if i dont remember wrongly, their balls are bright blue, i dont know why.. but they are)

then we drive around and watch the sky change colour.

posted by zhen* @ 12:34 AM 1 comments