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American Spirit II - Day 312; Safari Day; Thursday, November 13, 2014



Woke up at 3:00 AM; and got out of bed at 4:00 AM. Coffee and then finished one log and typed a second one.

Got Joel and Jeremy up at 5:30 AM as today is 'safari day.' Breakfast consisted of left over steak from a previous dinner; eggs; banana; and bread. Jeremy had a new culinary idea: bread with cut banana slices, butter and jelly. Sounds pretty good. I believe I'll try it tomorrow.

We departed in two small buses with a capacity of 22 passengers each at around 7:00 AM; and arrived at Hluhluwe iMfolozi park at 8:20 AM. Joel from Rally control was riding in the other bus. I found out later that this was his first safari.

The first thing we saw was a large bull elephant with two giant ivory tusks. Nice start! And this is before we enter thru the 'official' park gates. By 8:40 AM we're in a 9 person open vehicle. The sides of the vehicle were open and there was a roof over us to keep out the sun and rain.

Our guide's name was Ace, and we traveled on paved roads or hard compacted roads as we toured the site. We found out later that the park is on land that used to be Shaka Zulu's royal hunting grounds. As such, it may be the oldest game preserve in South Africa.

The animals we saw included 3 of the 'big five': Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Cape Buffalo. The two we didn't see were lion and leopard. We saw lots of elephants, including one that almost knocked over, towards us, a medium sized bushy tree just a few feet from us. Five of the rhinoceros we saw in a mostly dry river bed were covered with mud and HUGE, and quite close to us. I thought one was going to ram our vehicle. The horns on these rhino's are much larger than you see on television. And the rhino's we saw were the white rhino, not the black rhino. Even though they're both black looking in color. We saw mostly small bunches of cape buffalo; but we did see one herd of maybe 75 later in the day. Of all the animals we saw today, the most dangerous is the cape buffalo. Our guide said part of the reason is that the animal doesn't exhibit any sort of sign or signal when its getting agitated, like all of the other animals do. The others all have 'tells' before they charge at you. Not so the cape buffalo. They are just nasty. Like an American buffalo on steroids.

Though we didn't see an lion, later in the day a pride was spotted elsewhere in the park but we didn't have enough time to go see it before we had to leave.

We also saw a fair number of giraffe; including one 30 feet from a road and our vehicle that was eating in some trees. The foliage was so thick that we almost drove by it before we saw it. It was very large, also.

Though we didn't see any Wild Dog, Africa's most successful predator; our guide said that there were 120 in the part; that there were 465 in total in South Africa and only 5,000 left in all of Africa.

Other 'facts' that our guide mentioned to us include: There were 2,000 rhino's in the park; and the male rhino has a shorter but thicker horn than the female because the males fight so much; That zebra stripes are as different as fingerprints, and that that allows a mother zebra to identify its siblings from a distance; That when a baby zebra is born its legs are the same length as its parents, so it blends in with the group better and is better able to flee a lion or leopard; Elephants sleep leaning against a tree or a slope of soil; That a giraffe can kick a lion to death and that the giraffe only sleeps 20 minutes a day; and that it can't have its head below its heart more than two minutes at a time or its in trouble; That the difference between a deer and an antelope is that a deer loses its antlers and an antelope never does; That vultures have to clean themselves (we saw one doing so in a river bed) after eating a kill because the blood interferes with the oil on their feathers; That a male elephant can keep an erection for 3 months(?); and that a young male elephant can have a medical condition called GPS (Green Penis Syndrome). Not sure what that is, but a larger bull elephant will batter a young bull with GPS and drive him away from the herd; An elephant poops every 45 minutes; and many of the wild animals like walking in the roads we're driving on because it offers a path of least resistance. I guess that's one of the reasons that there is so much dung on the roadway. 


Other animals we saw today include:
Giraffe;
Burchell's zebra
Warthog;
Chacma baboon;
Vervet monkey;
Monitor lizard (3 feet long);
Suni antelope;
Waterbuck;
Impala;
Nyala;
Kudu; 
Leopard tortoise.

Birds we saw include:
White-backed vulture, including a fuzzy baby vulture in a large nest in the top of a tree;
A few different types of hawks that we didn't see clearly enough to specifically identify;
Hamerdop;
Black-bellied bustard;
Cape turtle-dove;
Fork-tailed drongo;
Sombre greenbul;
Cape glossy starling;
Red-winged starling;
Blue waxbill.

A number of the animals we saw included mother/baby combinations: warthogs; zebras; giraffes; monkeys; baboons; impalas; rhino's; and elephants.

We saw a number of different large droppings which our guide could identify which animal left it. We also saw pairs of 'dung beetles' that had made a perfectly round ball of dung, about 3-4 inches in diameter, and as the female attached herself to the dung ball, planting her eggs inside of it, the male pushes it down an incline to wherever they're going. Quite interesting and comical to watch this.

Around 12:30 PM we had lunch at the Hilltop Resort. I had venison in curry sauce with white rice. It was quite good and very spicy. By 2:00 PM we were back in our vehicle and touring around again.

Our tour ended at 4:30 PM, and we were back at the marina by 5:45 PM.

Once back at the boat I was expecting some of our missing laundry to be deposited in our boat cockpit; but it wasn't, despite assurances by the laundry proprietor that it would be there. So I'll have to deal with that issue tomorrow. I intend to get the marina management involved so I have some leverage in getting 'satisfaction.'

Joel napped when we got back while Jeremy went to the clubhouse and read his tablet for a while.

Around 7:00 or so Joel and I, along with Jeanine, went to the clubhouse and had dinner there. I took a shower on the way back to the boat; and was back at the boat around 9:30 PM. Jeremy was already in bed. Joel showed up a little later and was in bed by 10:30 PM. I was still typing this log and then intended to read a while before going to bed. I had just bought the latest Jack Reacher novel, Personal, and was trying to make inroads in it.

Brian Fox

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