Tembe dag 4: First elephant session

Donderdag 08-11-2018

Tembe dag 4:          First elephant session    

Dieren vandaag gezien / Animals spotted:

·         Lion

·         Elephant

·         Impala

·         Nyala

·         Kudu

·         Zebra

·         Giraffe

·         African wattled lapwing

We were granted a little sleep-in again. We left at 4.30 am this morning. We picked up Toto and then we’re off. Not long after we left we found lion tracks. We followed them for till they moved into the bushes were we couldn’t go. After seeing the footage of the webcam in one of the hides Francois told us it was M149 When we  moved on it didn’t take us long to find some new tracks. We followed them as well. We drove along the fence line and finally tot signal for F13. We triangulated her but she was also in the bush. We turned around and drove to the swamp aria. We had signal for F76. The scanning showed us that she was close. Francois tried to pinpoint it better when Garhard saw the lions in the bushes about 3 meter away from us. After waiting for a short while we saw 2 females, 2 males and 3 juveniles. It was a big pride of lions and very impressing as we got to see the interact with each other. Like playing, resting, walking, M149 chase M150 away. They looked like they were having a nice rest whilst watching a whole heard of buffalo. We stayed there for at just under 1,5 hours. It was impressive to see them watching the buffalo. We had morning coffee and then drove back but they had left. We slowly drove to the camp but there were some tourist vehicles in front of us. So we couldn’t go any faster. This was a nice opportunity to watch some different animals like nyala, impala and some kudu. We also met Richard the park manager. A friendly looking man.

We arrived early at camp. Just enough time to get ready to go on our first elephant monitoring session. We did this with Leo (Elephant monitor) and his father in law: (Hans). We drove to the first hide, Mahlasela. When we arrived there were elephants taking a mud bath, having a drink and just having some fun. All of them were bulls. Some of them had very long tusks. When we left we had seen 22 elephants. We drove a bit more and passed some different waterholes. At one of them we found 3 different breeding herds. We had to be absolutely quite. When the 3 herds came together 2 of the bulls were getting into an argument and that meant for us it was time to leave. So that is what we did. We drove back to camp where we arrived at 1 pm. Not too bad.

We left early this session at 3.30 pm and drove to one of the beacons. Here we gotten a quick lesson in how to find and scan. I did a good job and was close to the right direction. Then we left the beacon to start our session. I was the one scanning. Not long after we started this session I thought there was another python on the road. I made Franscois stop. We stopped right on top of it. I got a bit of a fright but apparently is we a root of a tree that just looks like a python.

We had to get some meat for the dogs. Sini and I put the food on the slide and then Francois dropped it into the boma. After checking on the dogs we started our drive to find F16. I did quite a bit of scanning but there was not signal for a long time. But in the end I did have signal. It was moving all over the place. The bars and beeps changed so many times. It was just so frustrating. Francois tried as well and he had the same problem. So it wasn’t me. After waiting for a long time we did a triangulation and we went back to the camp