Day 23 Hoedspruit to Sausage Tree Safari Camp, Friday, Sept 19

Day 23 Hoedspruit to Sausage Tree Safari Camp, Friday, Sept 19

QOTD:

Somebody tell me what's the word?

What’s the word: Johannesburg!

Weather: warming up after breakfast then plateauing around low 70s and windy, very hazy

Scotland votes to stay with UK, Brits very very happy! Breakfast same-same along with a gust of wind that shakes the small leaves out of the trees above the patio; D thinks wind caused by nearby fire and smoke does fill the air a bit.

Checkout at Blue Cottages for a total of $340: 3 nights, 3 breakfasts, 2 dinners, assorted drinks, 3 dips in the pool, very reasonable.

Packing means separating what we’ll need at the safari camp for early morning and late afternoon guided drives and keeping an eye on the final packing (final packing is actually pretty easy: jam everything in the two suitcases and check them both through to SFO, leaving just one small carry-on). Leave a bit past 11:30 for the short ride to Sausage Tree Safari Camp (STSC).

Elephant skull

On the way to STSC:

Impala

Jackal

Turns out there IS a fire! It’s in Kruger NP proper, north and east of us, and it started yesterday and that’s what contributed to all the haziness in Blyde River Canyon. Today there’s even less sun and plenty of glare, and a smell of smoke at STSC. Visibility is actually very good, though hardly necessary as on our way in we get very close to several giraffe, a jackal, and a few impala.

One of the "Little Five"

Only part of game list if "wild" dog

Outdoor shower

"Tent" sleeping

STSC: WOW!! Of course, that’s just the first impression. Richard the co-owner (we met him in Chobe), gives us the lowdown: five large sleeping tents (so 10 people here per night max) with some of the best bathroom facilities on the entire trip (an “indoor/outdoor” shower! A bathtub!), a great central facility where we’ll be eating on verandas (if weather permits) or in a bbq “patio” outside, complete with small pool and 4 dogs.  

There’s even a watering hole on the other side of the electric fence (apparently only monkeys and snakes can make it inside the fence) where we’ll see animals coming up close to STSC (are those warthogs?) from our veranda or from up at the central site. STSC is not in Kruger NP proper: there’s no fence separating where we are and the park is so the animals are free to roam over a much larger area.

Lunch with two American couples who were at STSC yesterday as well. Quiche, sweet potato salad, a green salad, and DB and THB share a light alcohol dry cider (very nice, a touch sweeter than Tieton Ciderwork’s finest).

It’s very windy and we sit inside instead of on the open veranda;  there’s a question of what that means for the fire danger. Since the tents zip shut to keep the snakes out, THB and DB can have a lively debate about which is more worrisome, fire or snakes.

The guides for this drive (and all subsequent drives) are Liam (sp? driver and talker) and Themba (sp?) who sits in a seat out front of the truck and points out stuff along the way to Liam.

Zebra baby

Cape buffalo

We're close, verrrrry close, to lions

And surrounded

Quite the trip: five lions moving around the truck, a 3 day old zebra, a very large herd of buffalo, various birds, and lots of anecdotes and insights from Liam. Drinks at sundown except with the extreme cloud and haze cover there is no sundown; THB has a local brewski.

Liam is from Rhodesia, his family ran a sable (antelope or deer?) farm until Mugabe kicked them out of what became Zimbabwe. He is only 23, has been working at STSC for 3 years, and full of exciting anecdotes: his first day ever leading a walking safari, with lion cubs, and a young woman gets mauled; a guide that had his arm severed when he turned his back on a warthog momma shielding her young in a sleeping hole; how just an incidental brushing up to a candelabra cactus can lead to blindness or death; how a croc kills its prey; and how two couples showed up an STSC and got….engaged (ooops, nope, only one, the other guy decided to wait to propose after having his thunder stolen).

After a late return to STSC, THB is not feeling great: sitting in the way back of the truck for a long time left him woozy.  The group has dinner: chicken curry and rice (very good), something called pizza-in-a-pot (THB skips that), and THB also skips the pinotage. Later that night his stomach isn’t quite right, the first time on the trip anything like not feeling good has occurred (well, maybe the second, THB had one dehydration spell earlier).