November 19, 2008 – Madikwe Safaris

This morning we opted for a 4:00am wakeup call to get an earlier start and perhaps see more animals. We were very successful. We left the lodge in darkness before 5:00am and immediately saw a blue wildebeest on the road. We saw such an abundance of animals that was astounding. Giraffe, elephant, impala, zebra, blue wildebeest and kudu were all out in large herds in several areas as were smaller units of warthog and other deziens of the bush. We took a drive along the power lines, on a 2 wheel track path, and saw numerous baboons which sleep up in the towers to avoid predators. We also saw numerous white backed vultures on the towers. While were in that area Eugene received a radio message that wild dogs were spotted. They hadn’t been seen for about 6 months and aren’t seen very often by tourists so we made a high speed run to the area where they were. It was fortunate that we were in that area of the reserve and could get there in a short time. Most other lodges are on the other side of the reserve and usually don’t troll the area so only 3 vehicles got to where the dogs were. There was a pack of 21 dogs, 7 being new pups of about 3 months age, walking along the fence line of the reserve’s border. We spent about 20 minutes watching these gorgeous creatures calmly walking along and playing. Following that event we received a tip of a lion viewing and headed to the area where we saw 2 magnificent males with large manes. This was a different pair from the ones we saw the first day and they were beautiful. They had made a recent kill because their bellies were filled out. We took a leisurely run back to the lodge seeing many more animals of different types including baby impalas just ornt the day before but running as fast as their mothers. On this drive we saw far more quantity of all animals than we had seen the 3 previous drives combined. We returned to the lodge around 10:00am for a big breakfast and were at our leisure until high tea at 4:00.

We left our room around 3:00 to go to the lodge which required walking on stone steps up and down over bush area. A few steps from the room we came to a sudden halt because there was a 5 foot long Mozambique spitting cobra sunning on the walkway. It rose up and spread its hood and we stepped back very quickly (I think Pat jumped 5 ft backwards in one hop.) These snakes can accurately spit their venom up to 9 feet and they aim for the eyes. Fortunately the snakes around the property are familiar with humans and will only attack if you continue towards them when they spread their hood. The snake went back into the bush, we waited until rapid breathing slowed and continued on to the lodge. After tea we went for the evening drive where we saw numerous animals which were now common sighting and finally got our first close-up of rhino. There were 2 white rhinos munching grass on the side of the road. We stopped about 10 ft from them and just watched them for about 10 minutes. Towards dusk we came upon a male lion with 2 females walking towards us on the road so we stopped and waited for them to approach. The male laid down on the road in front of us and the females Split apart a few feet and passed right next to our vehicle and assumed an attack pose. There was a small herd of impala we had passed and were obscured by some bushes and the females were going to get one. Suddenly the wind changed direction and the male impalas started bellowing danger signals and the lions held their pose. Eugene said that the impalas were too far away to be caught once they were aware of the lions and the lions must have agreed because they sat down and closed their eyes while the impala walked away. Unfortunately we were blocked in with lions sleeping in front and behind on the road and, after waiting about 20 minutes, we circled around them through the bush to head back to the lodge. After cocktails we had another magnificent dinner prepared by Chef Innocent and returned to our rooms. The clouds had all disappeared and we sat on our deck with all lights out and enjoyed more stars than I can ever remember seeing at night because of zero light pollution.