Safari!

A beautiful South African summer morning saw us arriving in Hoedspruit, a bit to the east of some very impressive mountains and canyons that warrant exploration on a future trip.

The airport was great – disembarking onto the tarmac, which had gravel and grass very close to the plane.

And a greenery lined walkway to the small terminal building.

Baggage claim is in an inside/outside area. It already feels like safari!

About 10 minutes from the airport we spotted our first giraffe on the side of the road. Woohoo!

We’re staying at Shindzela, a tented camp in the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. The general area is accessed by a hard surface main road, but to get to any of the camps, and indeed, the spotting areas, the way is on bumpy, dusty, or wet bush roads. There was a significant flooding event in the region about 3 weeks ago and some areas still haven’t recovered. This crossing has seen better days.

Unfortunately, our driver psyched himself out for the mud hole and got stuck. There’s no phone service out here so we had to wait about 40 minutes until another safari group came along with Land Cruisers and tow straps to help us get on our way. Apparently our driver made it back without further incident.

Here’s our home for the next 4 days. A basic but very comfortable place – there was a maximum of 17 guests spread across 8 tents.

Now, the routines of the day will be pretty much the same, so I’ll just go over each item once and include pictures from all of the days, and the animals at the end.

At 4:00 pm is the afternoon game drive. It’s still pretty hot out now so the wind in the open air vehicle is very welcome. Ellie captured her shotgun seat that she held on to for the whole stay, next to our safari guide Lauren.

The game drives lasted about 3-3.5 hours depending on what animals we were seeing and how far away from camp we got.

Around 6:00 PM we’d stop for a Sundowner drink and snack in the bush, somewhere with a nice view of the African sun lowering in the sky. You could pre-order any drink you wanted from the bar and it was all brought out in a cooler. And most of the time we’d stop at a spot that had one or two bars of mobile phone service, which proved to be quite useful as the camp internet went down for 2.5 days the next morning.

It was fun on the way back in the dark, too. The guide would scan the bushes with a flashlight, and this picked up our only sighting of a leopard on the trip – just reflections of its eyes before it scurried away into the bush.

Then we’d return to camp and have dinner under the stars in the boma with a fire going. A boma is a traditional enclosure made of branches (preferably with thorns) to protect livestock or people – but these days it’s more of an experience to have an awesome open air dining experience. We really enjoyed this and not a single dinner was disrupted by the weather. One of the best things was, is that for the meals you sat at the same table as the people in your drive group, along with the guide. So everyone got to know each other, which made the experience that much better.

The dinner offerings were mostly Western foods, except the desserts which were decidedly South African. But one night there was this ostrich steak, which was quite good. Similar to a beef steak but much leaner.

Morning game drives began with a 5:00 am wakeup knock. We’d set off at 5:30. It was much cooler in the mornings and most of us wore long sleeves, pants, or maybe a blanket in the wind. A couple of the mornings we saw hyenas very, very close to the camp gate – the last morning there were a pair of them just a few metres away.

We’d usually stop around 7:30 for a coffee and muffins. It was a nice start to the day and great way to stretch our legs after bouncing around in the Land Cruiser for a couple of hours.

Returning to camp between 8:30-9:00, we’d have breakfast served shortly thereafter.
Most people would take a rest around the pool or nap back in their rooms after breakfast. Lunch wasn’t until 2:30 so there was plenty of time to relax, and it was very peaceful.

Sometimes we’d see wildlife at the watering hole just across the creekbed from the lodge – like elephants, giraffes, or hyenas.

Photo by Ellie.

Or even right outside the dining room at lunch!

Whether right from the camp or out on the game drives, here’s a non-exhaustive list of the wildlife we saw.

Elephant

This guy was actually making some aggressive moves towards us so we had to back away. Ellie said he was testing his confidence.

Rhino

Lion

Yes, they’re making little lions!

Giraffe

Hippo

Hyena

Zebra

Impala

Cape Buffalo

No pics:

Gnu
Warthog
Python
Water buck
Banded mongoose
Crocodile
Leopard tortoise
Genet

It was a fantastic safari camp experience. We’d recommend Shindzela to anyone. The staff were all amazing and treated everyone wonderfully. Especially the camp host, Lorna, and our guide Lauren, who let Ellie talk her way through most of the game drives with a ton of questions.