WOW!!!

We arrive at Notten camp -day one: The short version of this blog is simple, and consists of only one word: WOW!

Let me warn everyone that the long version will indeed be long, and will not do justice to the experience.

We left Cape Town on a rainy and quite cool Monday Morning.  A 2 hour flight took up to Nelspruit – a largish town right at the edge of Kruger Park.  Kruger is huge and in fact extends across multiple countries (south Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe).  Years ago, all the internal fences were taken down, making it a completely uninterrupted range for all kind of animals. Within Kruger are also a number of private preserves:  the land belongs to private owners, but these fences were taken down too.

We are in one of the private reserves, Sabi-Sabi, in a small “camp” called Notten camp.

I added the quotes because we are definitely not camping….  This “camp” consists of 8 lovely bungalows, with decks overlooking the watering hole, where (so far) we have seen elephants, giraffes, impalas, warthogs, baboons and monkeys come to drink.

The bungalows are lovely and the common areas, where we have meals together are indescribably pretty and serene (as I said – I just can’t do it justice).  I’ll post some picture in a later blog – including monkeys and baboons that play around the camp…

We took our first game watching ride at sunset:  first we followed a couple of leopards on their chase:  the female did catch a small impalas (we missed that part), but the male stole it from her, and we got to see him chew on his prey:  it is quite an awe inspiring thing.   

Our guide  is very knowledgeable and has been very good at explaining how the different animal societies work – and get us away from the “right” and “wrong” way of thinking that we tend to have (as in: it’s “wrong” for the male to take the female’s kill, particularly since she has 2 cubs to feed. ).  We also got to meet a bunch of elephant, a dazzle (that’s the technical term) of zebras, and some white rhinos (you’ll note that they are not white.  They are called while because they have wide lips that they use to mow the grass.  “Wide” was mispronounced into “white”.  And then the other kind was called “black” – to differentiate them – while in fact, they are both dark grey.  The “black ones have much thinner lips and eat leaves).

One thing that is amazing is how close we can get to them in the range rover:  they don’t see the range rover as a predator, since it has never been used that way.  They do see humans as predators, so we are under strict orders to not stand up in the car, because that makes us look like humans, not like a range rover…..  BTW- range rovers are amazing vehicles; I just could not believe what we were able to drive through…..

We can go within a couple of feet of all the animals – close enough to tough them, but not stupid enough to try…..

Oh, I forgot, in the middle of this little ride, we stop and have a drink- they’ll bring anything you want – most of the brits had gin and tonic (Claire would like this place!), I had some wine, Joe some whiskey – at sunset, in the bush…  as I said – wow!

It’s the full moon, so the sky is bright enough to walk around at night without a light- but we don’t dare because of the hyenas (!!!!).  I got to see the Southern cross- very bright in the sky, for the first time.

After that, we had a lovely outside dinner.  It gets quite cool at night, and we had dinner by a bonfire.  Then off to bed early, because we are getting up at 5:30am for our morning ride!