Bush greetings!
It feels like we skipped spring and went straight into summer, having already recorded temperatures of 41deg.
But these types of days, with strong berg winds, have been followed by nice cool days. It seems to have settled down now and it’s now constantly hot with temperatures mid to late thirties, with uncharacteristic strong winds on some days. The rains show signs of coming as it is building up to rain quite regularly – both camps had 0.5mm on Fri night. Speaking to the warden he says that to have a good rain season, rains must only start from after mid October. We wait in anticipation!
The bush is the driest we have seen it in 3 years but the starkness of the bush brings its own beauty and makes for excellent gameviewing. We recently had dutch guests staying at Kitara who, to start off, were shocked that everything was “dead”, it took some good guiding to show them the beauty and viewing opportunities. In the last week or so, we have seen the knobthorns and jackalberry trees sprouting bright green new foliage – all the trees in camp at Kitara and Nyeleti are lush and green and throughout the reserve bright green trees dot the horizon.
We see the signs of the dryness through the actions of the game: herds of buffalo spending more and more time in the river bed and close to the Kitara waterholes, at least 4 herds of elephants passing through the river bed for water daily, antelopes ranging from Sharpes Grysbok to as large as Kudu coming into the camps to eat the sweet grass and whatever they can get to, warthog ripping up the lawns at all the camps, and a large family of banded mongoose digging deep into the lawn for food at Kitara and Nyeleti. Most of the animals congregate around or in the vicinity of the waterholes and the Olifants & Klaserie Rivers.
At Nzumba Lodge, there is a war going on between the staff and the warthogs! For the warthogs the grass is literally “greener on the other side” of the fence and they can’t resist the temptation of sneaking up to it and start digging up the roots! The first few times of chasing them worked well until they realized there was no-one around at lunchtime and they now take advantage of that.
We are proud of our resident hippo that has decided that Kitara is the hot-spot. He started frequenting the area during the last rains and has decided to stay. He can regularly be seen grazing at night in the river bed in front of Kitara when there are guests in camp. When there are no guests, he happily makes his way into camp to help himself to the lush green grass. We see evidence of his movements all over by his damage to the grass and the spraying of his dung. We presume that he is living in a pool of water up river on the Thompson’s property, as the river in front of Kitara is all dry now.
We went through a stage of hardly seeing any elephant in front of Kitara, renowned for elephants frequenting the area for food and water. This was due to the fact that the Klaserie River still had water in it so they didn’t have to come and drink at Kitara as there is no food for them to eat in the river bed at the moment. Even the large wild date palm in front of the waterhole has been cut down by their feeding. In the last 2 weeks or so we have seen a change in that a large number of herds of elephants are passing in front of Kitara for water throughout the day and they are still finding food in front of Nyeleti. Nzumba is experience small breeding herds and lone bulls in the area. A couple of weeks ago, we had the pleasure of a wonderful landscape artist doing some garden remodeling at Nyeleti! A bull elephant climbed over the fence into the camp and decided it was the garden of Eden! He stayed for about 3 days, totally destroying a huge wild fig tree, taking down 2 wild palm trees, turning the beautiful Knobthorn tree in front of our house into a Vodacom cell phone tower, as well as destroying the water pressure pump to get to the water! He had an attitude of note and no amount of persuasion (shouting, foghorn and finally rifle warning shots) could get him to move. We finally had to get the warden in to shoot him with buckshot 7 times in the butt before he moved off. The elephant was not convinced and returned that night to do more damage realizing that at night time he was left at peace. This was until he and Donovan had a session of running around, warning shots firing, at 3am! He has not been back since but we flinch everytime we hear a branch breaking somewhere close to home. It shows how desperate he is for food!
We have a resident small herd of buffalo (approx 10 or so) almost constantly in the river bed now, moving between Kitara and Nyeleti, and are also starting to find their way into camp at night for feeding. Every now and then, we get a huge herd bedded for the night in the river bed. A huge breeding herd of about 200 strong spent about 3 days in the area of Nzumba and Dundee before they moved off towards the Balule. We remember a few years ago, Colin Rowles saying that it is a sure sign of the bush being dangerously dry when the buffalo start living in the river beds.
Rhino sightings abound! There is very seldom a drive now that guests don’t get to see rhino which is great to see again. We do have a strange couple : a full grown male and a calf moving around together. Guests staying at Nzumba have been privy to some wonderful rhino sightings at the waterhole, which are now a frequent occurrence. It is coming to the end of the rhino capture season due to the heat. By the end of the season, we will have notched 3 rhinos: 2 rhino’s were notched thanks to SA Breweries and in the next week we have a dutch family notching 1 rhino. Hopefully Klaserie Camps can still participate in the wonderful project in the following season!
The cats remain elusive! And only seem to make themselves seen when there are no guests around –much to Donovan and Pieter’s frustration. 10 days ago, Donovan tracked some lions onto a fresh zebra kill, by the next day, there was no sign of the lions or the carcass! Lions have been breaking the silence of the night by roaring while the moon changed its phases towards full moon.
Pieter and Esti got to enjoy the viewing of a large male leopard at the Dundee waterhole for about an hour. On the 15th Sept, Pieter saw male and female leopard mating before being disturbed by a passing hyena at Dundee waterhole. The hyena soon realized that privacy would be appreciated when the male leopard responded with an aggressive growl to his presence!
We have found a hyena den consisting of five individuals in the vicinity of Dundee and they are ever-present at the waterhole as night falls. The hyenas killed and devoured an adult female kudu close to the borderline behind Dundee. They only left a leg or two and a large part of the skin.
General game viewing is excellent! Large herds of impala with very pregnant females, large families of kudu, good herds of giraffe with very small ones, herds of zebra and so the list goes. The antelope are battling with the lack of food around, hence them coming into camps to feed. They are starting to find reprieve in the new foliage of the knobthorns and jackalberries.
We wait in anticipation for all the migratory birds to return. Don has already seen the Wahlbergs Eagle. We were excited to see the return of a large flock of European Bea-Eaters that came to greet us early one morning at the beginning of the week. We also can’t wait to see all the beauty of the breeding plumage of the males.
We are really excited about the new addition to Klaserie Camps which is just under 1000ha of land on the Olifants River. This gives guests another dimension to experience gameviewing at the Olifants River which includes awesome sightings of large crocodiles, big pods of hippo’s, elephants drinking, aquatic birdlife and the list goes on. It’s really special to have a sundowner at the river at the end of the day, enjoying the tranquility and beauty, listening to the hippo’s calling – magical!
Come and share our piece of paradise! | 
