Day 60 to 63: Olifants River Game Reserve

So much for boosters and improved comms at the house. Postings blogs was clearly just out of reach.

 

For the past 4 days life in the bush has been fairly busy. Our great friends Wayne and Jean Diesel, from Miami,  joined us along with friends from Cape Town Steve and Sheila Pacak. So all had come a long way to spend special time with us. 

Jean and I have been besties since we met in Mrs Brett’s class in Grade 1 at Northcliff Primary School. She frequently visits SA to see her mom, so I am so lucky to see her regularly, Gray jokes that he is bossed around by two wives. 

Sheila and I met when our boys were at Nursery school and then they moved to Cape Town, it was great to catch up with her for a few days.

On our way to meet them all we came across a great sighting of a fish eagle eating a barbel it had just caught. This was the start of some wonderful bush sightings: we saw breeding herds of ellies drinking at water holes, one particularly interesting interaction was of a stand off between two elephant bulls and how the non dominant one backed off. On another sighting, as the Ellie came down to the water hole they disrupted a pride of 8 lions resting nearby. For an hour we didn’t what to watch, lions skulking all around, baby ellies being protected by the herd or the herd drinking and spraying water with their trunks. We also had a great sighting of a hyena one night. 

We had sundowners with spectacular sunsets every evening. Then nights around the braai fire, with the wine flowing. Steve had flown from CT to Hoedspruit with a case of some of the Cape’s finest. As always we frequently shine the light around below the deck to look for the resident civets and genet. One night a Gray shone over the edge there was a leopard drinking at the little waterhole. 

Lots of eating and lots of drinking and loads of laughs and fun. Gray is a carnivore and considers a chicken dinner vegetarian. Jean likes her healthy food and clearly concerned that we might be on a full on braai diet, arrived with enough fruit, veg and salad goods to feed an army of vegans for a year. Heaven forbid, Gray even landed up with lettuce in his drinks fridge. 

Thanks friends for making the effort to spend time with us. Sorry Wayne that we didn’t get to see your rhino and sable.