Tembe dag 5: The day prince Harry slipped through my fingers.

Vrijdag 9-11-2018

Tembe dag 5:          The day prince Harry slipped through my fingers.

Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:

·         Elephant

·         Lion

·         Kudu

·         Nyala

·         Impala

·         Lilac breasted roller

·         African Hoopoe

·         Water monitor

·         Buffalo

·         Blue wildebeest

·         Giraffe

·         Vervet monkey

·         Zebra

·         Broad-billed roller.

·         African wattled lapwing
 

We left at 4.30 am this morning with Ben but we had to changes the tyre from the vehicle first. We finished this around 5 am. Ben did this fairly fast in comparison to the others. We followed some tracks again but it was they were a bit old. We checked on the boma and all the dogs were still all right. On our way we found some lion tracks so we tried to find them. We heard a lion roaring in the distance. By using the telemetry we knew that F13 was around, so it was probably her. Than another lion started to roar, but this one doesn’t have a collar.

We drove to the beacon to scan from there. It was a lovely day and I decided to go up the beacon. It is a nice climb but a bit spooky. Straight up and nothing else than the metal handles to hold on to. I don’t want to think about wat would happen if one breaks lose. The view from there was spectacular. Bushes and trees as far as I could see. After we left the beacon we went looking for the lions. We were not successful. We saw some animals but not to many, like a group of kudu’s, some impala’s and nyalas but that was it. Even the birds were gone.

Drove back thru the east part of the swamp. There was a line of people walking through the swamp. The are there to remove the alien species. They spray them and then the plant will die. This is to protect the indigenous plants. We had to hurry up because we were supposed to leave at 10 am with Leo on the elephant session. While doing this we passed a water monitor, a buffalo, some giraffe and that was about it.

Leo picked us up just after 10.30 am. All of us were going including Lynda and Wendy except for Garhard. We pasted drove true a part of the park we hadn’t been before. It took a long drive to finally find an elephant. It was a lonely bull. He gave a little bit of a show. He threw sand over himself and laid down and rolled in the mud. Of we were again we drove along the west swamp and then on to the east swamp road. Here we found different herds of elephants. They were in the swamps. It was hard to see the elephants even when there this big. The first herd consisted out of 7 elephants, one of them was a little one of just over 6 months. Then the next herd came. This was a huge one. We counted 39 elephants but there were still some in the swamp so we estimated the group around 70 animals. There were a few babies but one of them was just 3 months old. So tiny but cute. The elephants protected them very well. We drove backwards a few times to avoid being in the middle of this huge herd. After driving back a very long way we turned around and choose a different road. Leo drives way faster than most monitors do so you have to hold on otherwise you jump of you the seat. We had some extra passenger animals like a grasshopper, a butterfly and some other weird insects

We arrived back at camp around 3 pm.

We left again at 4 pm. Just a very short break. We did some shopping and then left to go on session. When checking the boma we found some new lion print. This lion had tried to get into the boma but got shocked by the electric fencing on the ground.

We tried to find F70 and F13. F70 wasn’t around. On our way we came across a safari truck. When it drove off I saw a men that resembles prince Harry. I wasn’t the only one who saw him, so did Kari and Sini. We are “sure” it was him. It explains why there were so few animals. They must have rounded the up so he could encounter all the special animals in the park. 😊. Except for this there wasn’t much excitement till the last half an hour. We finally got signal for F17. She was around a water hole. We could hear her calling softly, so we got down there and had a look. It was getting dark and hard to see. But in the end we finally did. We had to shine the flashlight on her to do so. She kept on moving and calling for her cubs. We didn’t see them. After a while we left her and went back to camp