Tuesday 28th to Thursday 30th April
Back to Mkuze Valley for 3 more nights of wild camping, this time at Inkululeko Camp.
Wild camping in a Big 5 reserve is rare in South Africa and Hanlie did a lot of work to find these awesome, remote places.
We set up camp and were just starting to prepare some late afternoon snacks, when Tommy noticed a lioness had popped up her head on the edge of our camp.
Slight panic ensued as we gathered lights and torches, our drinks and some food, built a large fire and brought a car close. There were 4 sub-adult lions and a lioness in our camp!
Luckily the camp has a kitchen area enclosed with wire mesh- to keep the monkeys from stealing food - so now all 6 of us were caged in with the lions at large.
After sunset they moved off but there was no way of knowing where they were in the darkness so there was no sitting around the fire for us. Neil and Andrew braaied wors and broodjies quickly, all the while shining spolights around to check for the lions.
Andrew has to ferry us all back to our caravans by car later and there was no going out until well after sunrise the next morning.
You aren't allowed to self-drive here so we had some game drives arranged, mornings being far better than the afternoons.
It's a beautiful reserve but driving is very slow, so it's a long, dark drive to camp at night.
Grumpy elephants blocked the roads a few times so we had to take long detours which delayed getting back and made cooking dinner very late.
No comments:
Post a Comment