Buzzing Around The World With Fellette & Doug

Not our best day...

We, and three other busloads of Prinsendam's finest drove about one hour out of Port Elizabeth to a 13,000 acre Private Game Reserve. We were greeted by young enthusiastic African Dancers.

They are from the Zhosa tribe. We were then offered drinks and light refreshments which were very nice. Then to the vehicles, we did come here to see animals, we thought. The vehicles are Land Rovers with three rows of bench seats each holding three safarians, eager to get out into the action. We also had a local tour guide on board sitting in the back, why I know not. Her cell phone going off with one of those "I think it is cute" musical rings that plays some National Anthem didn't sit too well either.

Unfortunately, this large [over 120] amount of people required strict control of vehicular traffic in this small an area. We travelled in groups of three or more vehicles, always following the leader on dirt roads. As you may know a game drive is a matter of chance in spotting animals. Obviously the first vehicle may have a chance to spot something and get a glimpse of it before the animal heads off. The following vehicles get to try to figure out what was there. It is annoying when somebody in a vehicle in front wants to take a picture of a bird on a tree limb 300 feet away, but before driving off wants to check the markings from the driver's bird book!

There is a magnificent herd of about 30 orxy looking animals which we have never seen before, however the closest we could get was about 1/4 mile. They had a head, horns and four legs, that is all I could tell. We viewed the same 7 giraffes over and over again from different angles. We did spot the four resident elephants from about two miles away on a hillside in the bush. Even with binoculars they were hard to see, never mind a photo. Our driver was pulled in from a nearby park for this overflow load and had never driven here before which didn't help.

Next we went to the "predator compound", yes, compound. We saw four wild dogs and a Siberian Tiger. Yep, a tiger in Africa. We did see a fleeting glimpse of two small female lions poking out of a bush behind the wire. Somehow, for me, the 12 foot electric fence and wires take the edge off.

We then returned to the main lodge where there is a waterhole with periodic animals appearing. The buffet lunch was well done and delicious.

There were no animal shots worth taking today. Instead, to keep my enthusiasm up I popped in some pictures of two of our grandkids in the Masai Mara in Kenya a few years ago.



I think there is more animals in one shot there than we saw all day.

I realise that two weeks in the bush cannot compare with a few hours in a private game park one hour from a major city, and for somebody who saw animals in the 'wild' for the first time it was a good teaser.

At least that's the way I saw it.

posted by Doug and Fellette @ 9:35 PM