November 10, 2021

 

Olifants, 1136

 

Stopped at the Olifants Restaurant for breakfast after a morning drive. This is a fantastic restaurant with so many memories. It has a deck overlooking the Olifants River far below. One of the great locations in Kruger. Memories of dinner with Gina under a full moon, with a bushbaby bouncing from branch to branch over our heads. It’s where Aislin, Gina and I gathered to have breakfast and regroup after a very traumatic experience where lions drove a newborn giraffe into the side of our rented Corolla. It’s also the scene of the famous “Piss off” incident, where an angry, thin South African dude, with a face like 40 miles of bad road, told all of the very habituated and pesky starlings to “Piss off” as he walked to his table to be seated.  And piss off they did.

 

I decided to have a light breakfast (for once) and ordered granola/yogurt/fruit and a muffin.  But the muffin is huge and delicious, and the muesli is huge and delicious so another failed attempt to not eat every meal like it’s my last. And the espresso here is… good.  Actually, very good.

 

The place is maybe 25% full and that seems to be a theme in the park generally. Many fewer cars on the road, facilities not full.  I’d guess that the park is at about a quarter to a third capacity, compared to our experiences here in the past. As in the States what that means is limited services (e.g., limited menus) and the staff are not getting their hours. They’re just rotating through. It’s like our experience in the US, but they’re highly dependent on international travel here. While most travel restrictions have been lifted, travel is more difficult, and I assume that it still seems daunting to people. It’s heartbreaking. Everything suffers. The people suffer and while I’m sure the animals don’t mind less human intrusion, at the end of the day the conservation and especially anti-poaching efforts must be diminished.

 

Yesterday morning I took a drive, not leaving until after 0600 when the espresso stand opens. And had a big win. One of the best experiences here is when one uses bush knowledge and curiosity and experience to make one’s own sighting. Leaving Orpen camp, on the beautiful Orpen-Satara road (a main east-east road), I came across a large female hyena, trucking down the road with a big mess of skin and ribs dangling from her mouth.  I just followed her at a distance, probably 50 meters behind her to see what she would do. There was very little traffic on the road and when a vehicle did approach, she took a turn off the road and carried on parallel to the road until the vehicle passed, and then she just popped back out on the road. Hyenas are very strong and can keep up a running gate, even carrying something heavy, for long distances. At one point, she was joined by another female. It was obvious that our girl is a very high-ranking female because she was not challenged in any way by the other hyena (hyena society is matriarchal and with a very rigid hierarchy, and they fight over any morsel). I noticed that in addition to being large and heavy-bellied, both hyenas seemed to have full teats, implying that they either had cubs or were heavily pregnant. Eventually she seemed to slow down and pulled off the road to the right, where she sat down her load in a shaded area right next to, and below the road surface. She just seemed to sit and rest. She definitely watched me but didn’t seem disturbed by my presence so I just switched off and got the lens out and watched. I watched for quite a while and then something amazing happened. Two fluffy ears poked out from beneath the roadway and suddenly it all became clear. There was a culvert under the road there and hyenas often use culverts as denning sites (waterproof, won’t collapse, just the right size to keep large predators out). Holy crap. I love watching and photographing baby hyenas. They’re as adorable and expressive as any baby in the bush.

 

Baby was very tentative and skittish but eventually emerged, only to race back in with any noise. The large female was joined by another and then also by a large juvenile. Baby was then joined by a second cub, of a different age, and then a third. Eventually, FIVE cubs emerged. All were small but represented at least two different litters (hence two females with full teats).  Shooting wasn’t great but enjoyed the sighting a lot. The cubs relaxed and ran and chased and annoyed the adults. Eventually many vehicles gathered there, and I decided that I’d enjoyed prime location long enough and left it to the others to scrap over.

 

I’m certain that location isn’t secret and I’m sure other people have found it. But if you didn’t know it was there, it’d be very difficult to spot, and it always feels great to make your own sighting. And baby hyenas are the best. They are Gina’s favorite.

 

Left Orpen later that morning and took a very long secondary road drive to Olifants. During that time the wind picked up and the clouds rolled in, and temperatures dropped probably 20 degrees F. Throughout the evening, the wind wailed, and it seemed certain that a big storm was in-bound but in the end, no rain overnight. And now, mid-day Wednesday, it’s still grey, cool and windy, but no rain.

 

I did a 4 or 5 hour drive this morning without much real purpose. I revisited a beautiful, hard to find little spot that has special meaning for me. It’s a small, obscure side road that runs along a beautiful cliff face before dead-ending maybe 100 meters off the road. I first found this place in ’09 or ’10 and have tried to come back whenever possible. It’s a beautiful, tranquil spot. Often there’s water here and I’ve photographed hamerkops eating tadpoles, and hyenas lounging in the mud, and water monitors fishing for impossibly large catfish. Today, I got a glimpse of a slender mongoose, but he quickly hid himself not to be seen again. Almost nothing else visible, I think because of the wind. Animals tend to hunker down. I turned the vehicle around so I can shoot out of the right side, and because there’s only one way in and one way out and I don’t like to be in a place where I don’t have an escape if needed. I was photographing some rock formation and a tree that had somehow gained a foothold in the rock face when I heard a branch break somewhere behind me. My normal brain ignores those random sounds, but out here you try to train your brain to ask, ‘OK, what’s that?’. And so, I thought, “OK, what was that?”. Branches don’t break themselves and to break a branch implies something big and that implies elephants. One might think that elephants would sound like locomotives crashing through dense mopani brush but they’re silent. Absolutely silent. I’m sure what I heard was a branch breaking as an elephant pulled it off a tree, not something stepped on in the bush. 

 

I put the camera down and started searching the bush over my shoulder and eventually saw some dark shapes and white tusks. Elephants are very inquisitive and may approach out of curiosity. Nothing aggressive and they weren’t that close, but I decided it was time to move along, glad that I’d already turned the car around.

 

After that, found a large bull elephant in the road and gave him plenty of space. Found more impala lambs (I'd seen my first impala lamb yesterday - a sure sign of the coming of spring).  Half-hearted attempts to photograph, but the wind and the poor light just didn’t make any of it worth the effort. And now back to camp, stopped at the gas station to drop tire pressure to make it easier on vehicle and me on these washboard roads, and then here to breakfast.

 

It’s ironic that, for me at least, when there is nothing that I must do, every decision seems difficult, requiring obsessive weighing of pros and cons. If I accomplish nothing else on this trip, dialing that back will be a win.

 

So, for now, I’ll hang out in the bungalow.  I’ve edited almost zero photos so maybe do some editing. Clean the dust off my cameras. All of this means a short drive this afternoon, but to where?