Liwonde National Park – Day 2 – River Safari

This morning we rose early in order to go on the bush walk with our guide McLoud. We left the lodge on foot at 05.30 and walked through some of the desert mopane forest. We saw many baboons, impala and warthog and also leant a lot about the vegetation and the animal tracks we came across, as well as the noises of the bush. By the time we got back to the lodge for breakfast it was rapidly getting very hot! Not too hot for a delicious cooked breakfast though!

After breakfast we headed off for a boat safari down the Shire River. This is one of the highlights of a visit to Mvuu and Liwonde National Park.

We came across many different birdlife…

 

A Half-collared Kingfisher

 

Goliath heron

…and several hippo lounging around in the river!

 

Keeping lookout!

There are many pods of mvuu in the Shire River.

The hightlight of the boat trip for me though was sitting and watching a herd of elephant come down to the waters edge to drink and then to swim across the river to the banks on the other side. It was fabulous!

 

Watching the herd from the boat.

Feeling thirsty!

Drinking in unison.

Now time for a swim!

We were both keeping our eyes close to the lens just in case!

 

A true wildlife photographer!

Next we headed back to the lodge and saw a few monkeys playing around the camp. We watched them for a while. There were so many babies with them it was lovely to just observe them for a while until they were chased away by some of the guides. The monkeys are apparently very good at stealing food!

 

Something interesting down there?

 

Alien looking babies!

Posing for a family portrait!

There was also a family of warthog snuffling around. I can’t believe how tiny the babies are!

 

How cute!

Next we are moving to Mvuu Camp and heading out on another afternoon/sunset game drive!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liwonde National Park – Day 1 – Mvuu Lodge

Today we arrived at Liwonde National Park one of Malawi’s best National Parks in terms of game viewing. It is a beautiful park with very diverse vegetation. 75% of the park is Mopane forest which means that at this time of the year (end of the dry season) this part of the park looks and feels very desert like. Another area of the park is situated on the banks of the Shire River so it is much greener and there is an abundance of hippo and crocs living in the river. This coupled with a count of between 600 and 800 elephant in only 548 sq/kms and no predators other than a few hyena explains why Liwonde is such a great park for game viewing.

We spent our first night at Mvuu Lodge, which I have to say was fabulous and the height of luxury.

 

Our chalet at Mvuu Lodge - very romantic!

 

View of the watering hole from our deck.

We had our own chalet situated on a watering hole so could watch the animals drinking from the waters edge by day…

 

Daily visitors to the watering hole.

… and at night the cacophony of noises included the crocs splashing and snapping for food, the hippo grunting and snorting and the crashing of the huge palm leaves as they fell from the tops of the trees, it was quite something. We were definitely in the middle of “the bush”!

 

At about 16.00 we went on a 3 hour game drive. We saw an incredible number of animals all milling around together it was a truly wonderful sight.  There were impala, waterbuck, kudu, warthogs and baboons galore and many had very young babies with them. Our cameras didn’t stop! It was absolutely fabulous!

 

Waterbuck keeping a watchful eye on us!

 

A large family of Kudu!

Male waterbuck.

We even saw a few hippo, one out of the water. They are such huge animals. I definitely wouldn’t want that running at me at 45kms/hour! Check out the teeth too!

 

Hippo grazing on a small patch of grass.

We stopped off in the park for sundowners (a good old Gin and Tonic went down a treat) at about 18.15 and watch the sun set, then we headed back to the Lodge for dinner at around 19.30, so part of the drive was in the dark.

 

The setting sun.

There are no large cats in Liwonde National Park, but we were lucky enough to saw two hyena (these are rare sightings in the park) during the part of the drive that was in the dark and several genet, which are a cross between the cat and the mongoose family.

 

Genet - a cross between the cat and the mongoose families!

After the drive we were treated to a fabulous meal at the lodge, a few more gin and tonics and then we headed back to our chalet (escorted by a guard) for our first night in the bush! What a wonderful day!

Roll on tomorrow!

 

clickety click in Malawi – Lake Malawi!

We are currently on our recce trip in Malawi, finalising our tour itinerary for our 2010 Malawi photography tours. It’s a tough job, but it has to be done!

After spending our first night in Lilongwe we headed to Lake Malawi to check out the accommodation options we had selected for our tours. After navigating the goats, bicycles and people on the roads out of Lilongwe (and all the way to the lake, for that matter) we then had to endure the 18km dirt road to Cape Maclear, which took us over an hour to drive in our AVIS class B, Toyota Yaris! It was an interesting journey and remindered me more of a fairground ride, but we arrived in time to catch a quite stunning sunset! Just what we had hoped for at the Lake!

 

 

Sunset on the shores of Lake Malawi!

After the roller coaster dirt road, it seemed rude not to enjoy a cold “green” (Carlsberg – the most popular beer in Malawi) whilst watching the setting sun! A deserved treat, I would say!

Claire enjoying a "green"!

We stayed one night at Cape Maclear and then headed to the Southern Lakeshores, back along the 18km dirt road. We spent the day checking out accommodatons and found a couple of stunning places. We ended up staying at Nkopola Lodge, which I have to say was absolutely beautiful!

 

The view from the bar!

The food was fabulous and the setting just delightful! I can’t wait to take our clickety click clients there.

 

Breakfast with a view!

Next we are heading further south to one of the gems of Malawi, Liwonde National Park.

I’ll be back in a couple of days (once we find internet connection again) so check back to find out about our experiences at Mvuu Lodge and Camp!

Just as a hint, Mvuu means Hippo…!

 

 

uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

We headed back to Didima Camp, Cathedral Peak at the weekend to check out a couple more walks that we want to do with our clickety click clients. Xolani came with us and he was very excited as he had never been to the Drakensberg before, yet had wanted to visit the area for some time. I lent him my spare camera and he was like a kid a sweet shop! Clickety clicking here there and everywhere!

The next clickety click photographer in the making!

 

Believe it or not, Xolani took more photos than Claire and I!

 

 

We walked the trail to Doreen Falls which started at Cathedral Peak Hotel and the walk was lovely. The weather was absolutely spectacular and by the time we got to Doreen Falls we were hot and happy to sit in the shade for a while having lunch. Claire and I dipped our feet in the cool mountain water, but Xolani decided that wasn’t enough! He ventured a bit further in!

 

An outdoor shower!

We had a fantasic afternoon chilling at the falls taking photos and giving Xolani time to dry off!

 

Deep in concentration.

The next morning Xolani and I took the helicopter to the top of the mountain just right of Cathedral Peak. Again the wether was absolutely fantastic (if a little hot) and the view was quite different to when Claire and I were there in September.

 

On top of the world!

Stunning scenery!

Yet another incredible stay at Didima camp! It really is a beautiful spot!

 

 

 

Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Drive.

We had to set off very early today in order to get to the park gates for opening at 05.00 so Nick, who I met in February when I was on the volunteer project and who has now set up his own company http://www.tailormadesafaris.co.za, picked us up from our flat at 04.00. He presented us with a much needed coffee each and we headed off on our way. Both Claire and I were extremely excited!

Our morning started off really well with an elephant sighting right next to the road, in fact at one point he was probably about 2 metres from the car. He was huge and so majestic!

What an incredible creature!

Whilst we were watching and photographing the elephant we looked up and saw a coulpe of wild dog walking down the road towards us. Wild dog are sighted very rarely in South Africa so we were incredibly lucky to see this. As an example, Nick has been working on safaris for three years now and this was only the third time he had sighted wild dog!

We decided to follow them to see where they were heading but just as we had turned around a jeep came down the road from the same direction as the wild dog and told us to head up the road in the direction the dogs had come from as the rest of the pack were feeding on a recent kill right by the side of the road. Nick did a swift u-turn and what an incredible sight met us! There were adult wild dogs and pups feeding and fighting over the bones. There must have been about 12 dogs in total. Once again our luck had struck!

Ahh, how cute...

We sat and watched the dogs for over an hour. It was wonderful, well apart from the crunching bones noises that frequently pierced the silent morning air!

Well maybe not so cute...

After a while a couple of hyena came skulking around to see if there was anything left, but they were out of luck. The dogs had polished off the lot and were beginning to head off down the road so we decided to move on.

We headed further into the iMfolozi side of the park towards viewpoint 17 which overlooks the iMfolozi river. This is where I experienced the elephant stampede in February, so it had previously been a good spot for me and today was no different, our luck was continuing…

When we got to the lookout point there was a pride of lions crossing the river. They had apparently earlier been feeding on a wildebeast they had killed the night before and so were now heading to a shady spot to sleep off their feed! Lions sleep for 20 hours a day and are rarely seen in water, so this was another great sighting! We watched them for a while before having our own breakfast! No wildebeast and no sleep for us afterwards though!

What an incredible sight!

Well after all this excitement we were more than happy and if we saw nothing else during the rest of day we would not have been disappointed, but there was still more to come…

We saw necking giraffe! This is how giraffe fight. They swing their heads at each other with the aim of headbutting the other one in the neck. It was very cool to watch!

Giraffe are even graceful when they fight!

Next we saw mating baboons!

Check out the teeth!

Then we saw warthog having a mudbath…

A spa in the bush!

…followed by a leopard tortoise strolling through the open grassy area.

A leopard tortoise

It was certainly a very active day and full of new experiences from the ones I had witnessed during my previous game drives in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game reserve. It was wonderful! And then…

…we were just about to head to the picnic spot for lunch, which we were really looking forward to as Nick was providing us with a true South African braai of steak, sausage and salad (oh and a bottle of wine!) when we were told by another guide that there were four lions up a couple of trees just off the side of the road if we wanted to see them! We hot-footed it over to the spot and were presented with yet another extremely rare sight!

Lions up a tree, extremely rare!

Leopards are often seen up trees because they are good climbers and this is where they can escape from the lions. Lions are not good climbers and so rarely venture up trees, so this was really quite a sight!

We stayed and watched the lions for a while but since they looked like they were there to stay for a while we eventually decided to head off for our lunch! It had been an incredible game drive and we had been extremely lucky!

Our http://www.tailormadesafari.co.za lunch was fabulous! Nick had thought of everything. We were told to relax and enjoy ourselves whilst he cooked the biggest steaks you have ever seen to absolute perfection!

After lunch we headed back towards the gate and by the time we arrived back in St Lucia it was about 18.30 and we were all shattered but absolutely buzzing! It had been a fabulous day. I can’t wait to be doing this with our clickety click clients!

Yet more amazing sights with clickety click…

Now that we are back in South Africa, the research must continue!

We decided to take the St Lucia estuary trip to check out the hippo and croc populations and to make sure it is something we definitely want our clients to do on their South Africa clickety click tours. There are 1200 hippo living in pods in the estuary and we were excited to see a few of them on the trip…

Keeping a close eye on us!

Maybe a little close for comfort.

Wouldn't want to get near those teeth!

Whilst hippo are herbivores, they do account for 60% of all human deaths by wild animals in Africa. They spend their days in the water and come out to graze on the grass at night but they are not comfortable on land so feel threatened if something is blocking their route back to the water. It is at this point when they will charge in an attempt to get back to the safety of water. Hippo can run on land at a speed of 40-50km/h so humans cannot out run them! Don’t try! Even in the water, hippo move fast. They can run along the bed of the estuary at a speed of 15km/h!

Unfortunately we didn’t see any crocs on the estuary trip as the water was very choppy and apparently the crocs tend not to cruise along the top of the water in these conditions. We did see a fair amount of bird life though.

This is a weaver bird hard at work building a nest. The males build the nests in the reeds and then the females will come to inspect their handy work. If the nest is of an acceptable standard the female will lay her eggs in it, but if not the male has to destroy the nest and start again!

Will it pass the test?

Since we hadn’t seen any crocs on the estuary trip we decided to head to the Crocodile Centre at the entrance to iSimangaliso Wetlands Park in order to see a couple of these delightful creatures! The Croc Centre is extrmemly well designed and maintained and is a great place to get some close up photos. I certainly wouldn’t want to be as near to one in the wild!

Very friendly!

Watch out for the tail too!

Gulp...!

As well as there being many crocs, we also saw several vervet monkeys playing around in the trees and along the walkways. They were happy to pose for a few shots!

I'll scratch yours, if you'll scratch mine!

Playing hide and seek.

Curiously watching our photography antics.

The Croc Centre is definitely worth a visit!

Next, a full day game drive in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve starting at 4am so off to bed early although am too excited to sleep!

Last entry for NZ!

Other than our treat to the model railway exhibition, our time in New Zealand has mainly been filled with working on clickety click, but we did head out at the weekend to the Ellesmere A&P (Agricultural and Pastoral) show. This was a true Kiwi experience with the highlight being the woodchoppers competition!

There were several different woodchopping competitive events from standing on the log and having to chop it in half in the quickest possible time to the Jack’n’Jack sawing competition and then the “creme de la creme” which was chopping in half a log that was nailed to the top on a tree trunk! In order to reach the top log the woodchopper had to chop a notch in the tree trunk, place a wooden plank in the notch and hop onto the plank, then whilst balancing on that wooden plank in mid-air, chop another notch in the tree and place a second plank in that notch. This was repeated three times on one side and then three times on the other side of the trunk and whilst standing on the top level plank, the woodchopper had to chop the top log in half! It was really extremely impressive! See what you think…

Sharpening the axe!

A race against time.

Yes, women woodchoppers also compete!

Jack'n'Jack sawing!

Notch number one!

Balancing the plank at aged 69!

Other than the woodchoppers there was also a funfair, show jumping and the opportunity to vote for the most attractive cow, sheep or pig!

The winner!

It was a great day out and a different experience to a Saturday in London!