Blog

After the East Africa safari finished we flew to Johannesburg, South Africa. About an hour into the 4 hour flight, I looked off to the left and was amazed to see the very top of Mount Kilimanjero poking up through the clouds. It seemed to be about the level we were flying!! What a massive mountain--it was so exciting to point at it and say "That's where we were, just on that top icy part, only 3 weeks ago!" Then we saw the Rift Valley again, and flew along it for a long way (it runs from Egypt to Mozambique) before we finally got onto flatter and very dry country.

Heading into Joburg airport it seemed that we were back in a very civilized country, compared to Kenya and Tanzania. We could see lots of many-laned highways, and power lines, and western-style and sized houses! I was very hopeful that we would only have "Western" toilets everywhere we went--after the pit toilets that were .... well, you could say the norm but even that was not quite correct for East Africa!!

However there was still a huge sense of unease, we found after we got settled into our guesthouse for the night. All those lovely houses were surrounded by huge walls, gates, barbed wire or electric fences on top, and guards. It was not safe to walk outside at night and there were quite a few horror stories of invasions and muggings throughout the countryside even, not just in the city.

Still and all, we enjoyed the drive to the hunting lodge in Limpopo province, about 4 hours north of Johannesburg, through beautiful countryside.

Hard to believe we were in the middle of winter! It was very dry, and warm in the daytime, and cool at night, between 7 and 25 degrees C. Apparently in the summer it is not uncommon for weeks of 40+ degree weather. Glad we weren't there for that!

The lodge was lovely and very friendly, and we were out every day seeing lots of familiar animals, as well as some new ones. I was happy with this little sketch of a bushbuck (bossbok in Africans) that I did from one of our host's tropies. Pieter holds the world record for another bushbuck.

The nyalas there were among the most beautiful antelopes in the world, I think, and I got some great photos to paint them from, as well as doing a good sketch. The males are quite differently coloured from the females, and when they were first discovered they thought they were different species. This is a lovely male that was hanging about the property!

We also drove to the top of those beautiful hills I showed you earlier, in another national park, and saw these klipspringers. They are a small antelope who stand on their tippytoes on the rocks--the name means "Rock Jumpers"--very apt!

After a week in the Limpopo province, we drove back to Johannesburg and flew on to Durban, on the Indian ocean, where we rented a car and spent the last 4 days of our African trip exploring the area. One last safari...ok, make it two days!

We drove north to St. Lucia National Park, which is a lagoon-based park containing leopards (we didn't see any more), hippos, crocodiles and again lots of birdlife.

This was the best photo I got of an African Fish Eagle catching a fish right in front of us!

OK, a few more lion sightings at Emfolozi National Park, which is known for saving the rhinos. We saw both white and black rhinos, giraffes, hyenas again, giraffes, kudo, impala, wildebeest, nyalas, elephants, and two more cheetahs, on our last day of safari. One was just resting beside the impala he had just killed, hiding under a tree so the other predators didn't steal his kill from him.

All in all, we had a fantastic time in Africa. If you want to go sometime, contact me and I'm happy to recommend the Nairobi tour outfitter--he did a fantastic job organizing the East Africa portion of our trip and you'll find that his prices are far lower than you will pay your local agent.

Next, on to Holland!