We have kicked off the new course and have another great group with us for the second half of the year. All of our placed students are in great hands and it sounds like they are having a blast! Charl and Marco have settled well with the Entabeni team, and are out there with their own guests already. The sightings have been great too with lion kills and cheetah sightings a-plenty.

Talley, Benry and Diederick are doing well at Lion Sands, and are so busy that I’m battling to get hold of them! This is good though, and the boys will soon be driving their own guests. But first the exams!

Tim is doing well at Nyati in the Sabi Sands, but he has had a bit of tick bite fever. Otherwise he is having a blast. Jack is doing exceptionally well here with us at the school, and left this morning for his senior assessment in track and sign at Mabula Game reserve. We wish him all the best!

Nico is in the Thornybush reserve at Jackalberry, and seems to be doing well, but is also very very busy learning the ropes. Rickus started with Africa on Foot and is now doing walking trails in the Klaserie reserve. Tammy is still battling with her licence before joining the Entabeni team, and I hope she gets it soon! Sakkie is completing his guided walks for VPDA, as he was a bit delayed due to a knee operation last semester, but he is also giving us a hand with the new recruits as regards organising and moving them around, and I think he likes being the ou-man in the group!

The new guys have started with an adrenaline packed course. The usual slow start has gone hay-wire with all kinds of great action.

We started with a great big walk up into the fern ledge area, with a load of trees, history, geology and plants covered. The guys were exhausted by the end of the eight hour hike but it was great, with a picnic on top of the pyramid. We climbed into the depths of the berg, with adventures in rock crevices where the SiPedi people once hid from Mzilikazi and his warriors. Shards of pottery are still found like the piece shown below, which has beautiful markings on it. Jack, the ever prepared brought the salt for the hard boiled eggs!

 

 

 

They also have had some action with the translocation of our white lion cubs. Who are now so big that they needed to be sedated. We all got a bit scratched up while trying to move them and Callie even ended up being tree bound for a while until we could rescue him. They have been moved to a “teenage” enclosure to give them more space.

 

 

We also were contacted by Lyle from Environmental Affairs. He needed help to remove some huge African Rock Pythons from a neighbouring cattle farm. We arrive in the early morning hoping to catch them basking. The plan worked out, and Lyle and Lee went ahead of the group to see if they could surprise them before they disappear into an Aardvark burrow. Lyle spotted two of them, one about 4 metres long and the other about two and a half metres long lying at the entrance to a burrow.

Lee charged and dove, grabbing the large one and throwing the other toward Lyle. Then it got a little hectic, as the big snake hooked itself into the burrow, dragging Lee along with it! Lyle grabbed Lee by the foot, and hung on, as he was already on his way into the burrow behind the massive snake! To complicate issues further, Lyle was still tussling with two and a half metres of cheesed off snake, one handed, and slightly distracted by the rescue operation. Lee’s whistles soon attracted the trainees who came running through the bush to the rescue! A great day for the pythons thought they didn’t think so themselves, as there was a good chance that the farmers might have killed them if we had not caught them. The snakes were released near the school, where an interested Dabchick (Little grebe) investigated the snake when it plunged into the dam where it was released, see the picture below. A brave little bird!

 

 

Banie also took the guys up the mountains to view some elephants. Apparently there was a stand off between some rhino and the ellies, quite a sight. We are also releasing a new herd of ellies below the mountain in the next couple of weeks, so the guys will be there to see the arrival, but I will update you all in the next news letter about them.

Banie also got a car stuck in an old Aardvark burrow, and taught the guys the basics of recovery. There was some fun had in learning how to get the vehicle out. A new event which the guys are now doing is sleep outs on our viewing deck at the waterhole. There have been three honey badger sightings in the camp this week so the guys are laying in wait to view them at the water hole. But they forget how cold the winter can be here, and I know a few of them disappeared to their rooms at about 2am, to avoid the cold! No luck with the honey badger yet though. The idea is that they gather after dinner and sleep on the deck over looking the water hole in order to see the badgers. So far they’ve seen duiker, warthogs, bushbuck, impala and wildebeest. The lions were in camp again a couple of days ago but did not come to drink.

 

 

We also had an awesome broad daylight warthog kill by our lions. A young lioness and a young male lion managed to ambush the young hog in a grassy plain near the school. It was an awesome sighting and a first kill for many of the students. We also had a sighting of a cheetah in the car park, which then proceeded to walk under room 3 at the school! The same cheetah also interrupted our track and sign training the other day too, by walking past us, about 40 metres away! You can see the blood on the face of the lioness below.

 

 

The lion pride has split again, with the Makhulu male fighting the Madala. Madala has some pretty good injuries around his right eye as you can see below, but the Makhulu is missing in action, and we haven’t seen him for a few days now. The big females are all with the old boy, which shows he is still the main man!

 

 

Lots of little ones are on the reserve at the moment with a load of sable calves, about 12 I think, and a brand new buffalo calf too. The giraffes below the mountain have taken to hanging around in a huge herd, or journey, of 22 animals. They also have a few young calves in the group.

 

 

The bird life is quiet, as is usual in winter, but the moorhen has 3 chicks on Tsi tsi dam, which makes a beautiful scene. We have also seen Retz helmetshrikes up in the berg as well as Pygmy geese on Tsi tsi dam. The African hawk eagles are also back, preparing their nest on Nyala drive for the breeding season in September or October.

 

 

We have had a lot of enquiries about our accommodation at the camp, so I have added a couple of pictures of our rooms, which accommodate 2 students each. They have wooden floors, canvass walls and a thatched roof. We are situated in a forested area in the south of the 24000 ha reserve, far from any other camps. The rooms have a shower, loo and basin in a small bathroom at the back, built in cupboards, and all have a small private game viewing balcony in front. There is a bed, desk, chair, bedside table and deck chair per student in the rooms. These rooms are fully interlinked by walk ways, in fact about 600 metres of them! We have placed the rooms fairly far apart from one another to allow for a little bit of privacy. The lecture hall and dining hall is a big double story canvass and thatch unit with a great view. The dining room is down stairs, with a water hole (artificial) right in front of it. There is a big spot light on a day night switch which illuminates the water by night, allowing for the chance to view game. This is what I was chatting about earlier when I mentioned the sleep outs on the deck. So far we have seen cheetah, lion, genet, jackal, honey badger, porcupine, duiker, impala, zebra, wildebeest, aardvark and a load of other creatures around and at the water hole.

 

 

A huge amount of large kudu bulls have started to arrive on the reserve, from goodness knows where, but probably up in the inaccessible parts of the reserve. These magnificent creatures are adding great value to the game viewing, and a pleasure to have around.

 

 

From the ENGTS team