St Lucia

My first weekend at Thanda was spent in a nearby "Beachside" town called St Lucia.  It is about 1.5 hrs drive from the reserve.  Due to the awful weather we left early Friday morning to start our weekend of much needed R&R.

St Lucia Town is little more than 1 main road, loads of restaurants and cafes and a few stores.  There is of course a long strip of markets selling wooden carvings, beaded jewellery and artworks as well as fresh fruit and veggie stands.  It is very much a town catering towards the tourist.

One of the many Markets

St Lucia is also the main access point to the iSimangaliso Wetlands Park (http://www.isimangaliso.com).  A huge park which spans from Durban in the south up to Mozambique in the North and west all the way to the Kruger.  The iSimangaliso Wetland Park was listed as South Africa’s first World Heritage Site in December 1999 is 332 000 hectare and contains three major lake systems, eight interlinking ecosystems, 700 year old fishing traditions, most of South Africa’s remaining swamp forests, Africa’s largest estuarine system, 526 bird species and 25 000 year-old coastal dunes.

After an early dinner on Friday night we boarded our Safari truck for our very first night drive with our local guide Sakhile.  It was a dark night but with the 2 search lamps were able to spot a good range of animals including Zebra, Honey Badger, Bush Baby’s (kind of like possums), Owl,  bark spiders, chameleon, tiny little frogs about the size of my big toe nail,  hyena, porcupine, bush bucks, and wort hogs.  It was great to drive through in the night when all the nocturnal animals were our looking for their dinner.  It was however very difficult to take quality photos.

We were then up early Saturday morning to head back into the Park for a full day Heritage Tour we again had Sakhile as our driver - a local guide with extensive knowledge of the park and area.  We saw Buffalo, Kudo, Hippo, bush and reed bucks, more spiders, Antelope, Nayla, more tiny little frogs, Zebra,White Rhino and Black Rhino, both of which are on the endangered list - there are only 2 black rhino in the whole park and we were so lucky to have seen 1 of them.   

A pair of White Rhino

We had a chance to go swimming and snorkelling in the Indian Ocean, we swam but nothing worth snorkelling for.  We then had a Braii (BBQ) cooked by our tour guide/driver with a pose of vermont monkeys watch and hoping for food, the cheeky things have no respect or fear of white people especially women so when it was just the 4 of us ladies at the table the dam things came over and stole a bread roll off Ali’s plate, as soon as our guide came back (black african guy with dread locks) they all ran away.  We had a free night on Saturday night, had some dinner at a great restaurant and was in bed by 10pm, absolutely exhausted and in need of sleep in preparation for our Sunday Hippo and Crocodile boat tour. 

Our lunch or spiced sausage and sweet banana

We climbed aboard or covered pontoon style boat with our captain and tour guide Anthony and set off on the hunt for hippos and crocs.  We weren’t too sure if we would see any crocs as they don’t like people or boas very much and tend to shy away, Hippos on the other hand didn’t care either way if we are there or not.

We must have seen close to a hundred hippos over the morning all with their heads popping out of the water – a hippo spend its days fully submerged other than its face as its skin is very sensitive and will burn in the harsh sun, they can also stay submerged completely for up to 12 minutes so you never know where they might pop up in the river.  We were fortunate to see a pair of young hippos play fighting right in front of us – very cute.

Playing Hippos

We were also lucky to come across a small croc – about 2m who was quite interested in our boat and came quite close, lifted his body so he was right on top of the water and showed off quite a bit allowing us to get some great photos of him.  He followed us for a little while before becoming bored and swimming away. 

Curious Crocodile

It was nice to spend some time out on the river, hearing all about the wetlands and ecosystems, seeing all the different birds, feeding the crabs and watching the hippos play.

St Lucia was a great place for a weekend away but certainly not somewhere I could live permanently – I’m not sure how the locals do it.

We headed back to Thanda that afternoon to find the rains hadn’t stopped over the weekend and that the park had flooded in several areas.  We all prayed and hoped for sunshine for the coming week.

Life at Thanda Private Game Reserve

I have just completed my 3^rd Week on Thanda Private Game Reserve and have been so busy I have neglected my blog so have decided to give you all a snapshot of what I have been up to.

It all started at the Mugg & Bean Durban Airport where we met the African Impact team, the new arrivals and those who had just finished their time on the projects.  It was great to speak to the volunteers that were leaving and hear all about the work they had done, to hear about the reserve itself and the other volunteers that were still on project.  It got us all really excited to get on the road and head for Thanda – our home for the next month.

Once we arrived at the reserve we were greeted by Zebra as we travelled up the long drive then further along by the African Impact crew we would be working with.  We were allocated our room and room mates, given a quick run through of what to look out for when walking at night (red eyes mean danger/predator, green eyes mean safe to proceed).

Our accommodation rooms are triangle hunts with 2 single beds and a small bathroom and a patio looking out over the game reserve.  They are small but clean and comfortable.  The beds have mosquito nets to stop the geckos from jumping on you while sleeping because there are so many of them in the rooms.   We were also warned to never leave our windows open when not in the room as the monkeys come in and rummage through your things.

Our Accommodation Room #25 - Thanda Private Game Reserve

The cosy inside

Our Patio and View to the Reserve

There is also a large building where we have all our meals, 2 lounge areas, a bar and downstairs a table tennis table and swimming pool, all in all I think we will be quite comfortable at the lodge.  The lodge itself is now only used as a training center for the volunteers; it used to be the staff quarters for the main Thanda lodge located up the road.

The Bar and one of the Lounge areas

Our Pool with Amazing views out to the Reserve

Our first week was spent with our photography instructor Amil, a local photographer with so much knowledge, enthusiasm and passion for photography that it just gets you excited about it too.  We were fortunate to have a game drive on our first morning where we met Sakhile who is our Game Viewer Driver for all our drives, great guy, excellent drive and so knowledgeable about the flora and fauna on the reserve.  We saw Lions and Buffalo, Zebra and Giraffe- little did we know this was going to be our last game drive for over a week due to the heavy rains that fell all week flooding the reserve, local areas as well as the Kruger National Park and parts of Mozambique, it pretty much left us locked away on our reserve.  As photographers we were kept busy learning everything there was to know about photography, our cameras and Adobe Lightroom.  It was such a big week by the weekend we were exhausted and experiencing an extreme case of cabin fever.  We escaped early Friday for our much needed weekend away in nearby St Lucia which I will tell you all about in my next post.

Sample of my work from Week 1

African Monarch Butterfly - Week 1

Week 2 didn’t start so well as it was still raining which meant the roads in Thanda Reserve were still closed.  We were however able to get to a nearby Game reserve and do a full day drive, it rained for the morning so we got drenched and all the animals were hiding but by lunch it was starting to clear up, we were starting to dry out and the animals were also coming out to see some sun.  We mostly saw Giraffe but we were all quite happy with that.

It was as if the powers that be knew how bad our 1^st week had been and gave us an awesome 2^nd week.  It all started on our Tuesday afternoon game drive when we had the call to ask us to watch 3 lions (1 male, 2 female) until the rangers could get to them, they were planning to relocate the females to a nearby game reserve as ours it getting too populated due to a recent litter.  We normally have to be out of the reserve by 4pm but were granted special permission by the Thanda CEO to partake in the lion darting and the transporting of the 2 lions back to base camp where we were able to pat them (while they were sedated).  It was an amazing experience to see, a little scary when the giant male lion came racing towards our truck but good to see that none of the lions were hurt in the process.

Some very sleepy Lions - the 2 female were darted and relocated
Lions can sleep for up to 18 hours a day

To top the day off as we headed back to base camp we saw a leopard, the most elusive and difficult of the big 5 to see, he only stayed around for a minute but allowed us to get a quick photo and bragging rights when we arrived back at the lodge.  Some of the past volunteers had gone 3 months without seeing leopards – we were all considering ourselves very lucky.

My first Leopard

The rest of the week was great – I finally got to see my first elephant on Thanda and he was only a few meters away, we spent about an hour watching and photography the cheetah brothers, saw White Rhino, more Giraffe, Zebra, Antelope, Warthogs, Wildebeest and Buffalo – it is truly amazing to think that I am now seeing these animals almost every single day like we would a dog or a cat back home.

A very cheeky Giraffe

We were supposed to conduct a lesson on Rhino’s and Rhino Poaching to a group of student from a nearby high school, unfortunately we found that on the day the roads were still closed and we couldn’t get into the community to get to the school to pick the kids up – it was a bit disappointing as we had put so much work and effort into the lesson so we are now hoping to conduct the class in week 4 when we head to the school.

It was again a 4-day working week as Friday morning we set off for a 4 day weekend in the Drakensburg Mountains, again I will tell you more about that in another blog.

Our 3^rd week also started on a high, we again had a leopard sighting and lion sighting on Tuesday morning as we headed down our drive for another nearby reserve for a boat trip to see elephants, I’m not sure if I was more excited about the elephants or the leopard – both were pretty amazing. 

We boarded our boat and within minutes were watching a whole herd of elephants splashing and playing in the water including a few babies and teenagers – I could have sat and watched them all day.  We also saw hippos, buffalo, numerous birds and about 10 ostrich running about.  Our trip home was again highlighted by another leopard sighting, we were considering ourselves increadibly lucky and decided that was our leopard sightings done for the rest of our trip.

Elephants on the Mkuze River

Tuesday night we went on our first night drive on Thanda, before long we had another glimpse of the leopard we had seen earlier in the day, he didn’t stay too long so it was off to see what else we could find.  It was long until we saw a jackal, a magnificent owl and a few Zebra.  The call came in to say Tyela, one of our 2 male lions was not far away.  Tyela is a stunning lions who is quite happy for us to park our safari truck quite close, he is so comfortable with people being around he often falls asleep next to us, not friendly enough for us to get out of the trucks and pat him though.  After spending quality time with Tyela it was time to head off and see what else we could find.  There were rumors from the rangers that there was another leopard nearby, as luck was on our side we came across him quite quickly and were able to get some pretty good photos considering it was a night drive.  Tuesday 18^th March 2014 has now been renamed Thanda Leopard Day due to the 4 sightings.

Spotted Eagle Owl

Hiding Leopard

Tyela - Mufasa part of the North Pride

The rest of the week was busy as we had 2 drives per day, edited our photos and worked on our final submissions for Top 20 images, cover shot competition images and trip write ups.  We are all looking forward to a relaxing weekend where we have done little but recover from our hangovers caused by pub night last night (way too much alcohol and shots consumed), there are several plans to relax by the pool, catch up on sleep and life away from the reserve.

It is sad to say that next week will be my last week here at Thanda, it has been an amazing experience to date and am so glad I decided to take the leap and finally come to Africa.