M.A.C in Africa: The Ivory Trail

14th April: Lion kill at camp

Only a few nights back at camp and excitement already. We were hosting a "boma evening" for the EcoQuest group who were leaving the next day - a candle lit dinner sitting around the open fire. Enjoying the romantic side of the bush, the atmosphere was notched up a level or two when we heard lions roaring just outside camp! The sound was incredible, and they were so close you could almost feel the vibrations running through you. It is not often we get lions near camp, so when they called again the next night and then the night after that as well, Bruce suggested that they may have made a kill nearby. We set out to scour the ridges behind camp, and low and behold we found a huge kudu carcass hidden under some thick trees and vegetation. We traced the drag marks back to "the kill zone" and played out the scenario, tracing blood, hair, tracks and signs of struggle. Atleast two big male lions had taken down the trophy kudu bull at the foot of the koppie, just 100m from camp. That none of us heard the kill was incredible. The following night, the kudu was discovered by hyenas and the lion roars and moans were replaced by hyenas cackling and laughing all night. Walking from camp the following morning, we found the kudu carcass right at our front door, on the fire break - the hyenas had dragged the carcass down the koppie to feed on it. Out in the open now, the vultures were also in on the action and we heard squawking and squabbling from them all day. So much excitement and action so close to camp! The ironic thing was that the day of the kill, Dan and I were jogging around the outer firebreak and he mentioned some lion tracks...they must have been watching us the whole time! Note to self, watch out for lions.

The Kudu carcass - check out those horns!

17th April: Bush models

Albie Venter, an EcoTraining instructor and well known photographer came to visit camp this week to take some new marketing photo's for EcoTraining. We were provided as his models, so for 4 days we visited some of the most beautiful spots in Makuleke, kitted up in our uniforms and asked to do silly things like look happy to get some good shots. One morning he wanted to get a photo of the sun rising over Reedbuck Vlei and the fever tree forest, so we drove the hour it took to get up there in the dark and were treated to the most stunning sunrise, with a layer of mist over the pan and ever changing colours in the sky. Another awesome shoot was with some buffalo in the huge open pan at Banynini. We approached them in head hight long grass, and the buffalo started moving towards us to see what we were. We had no cover, so it was quite hair raising! Albie insisted we pressed on though as the shots were great, and we ended up having the most amazing encounter, stood in the middle of the pan, 6 of us in a line, and 50+ buff standing in their own line opposite us. I'm yet to see the edited pics, but look out for us on the EcoTraining website and we are for hire should you need GREAT models with excellent fake smiles. Ha.

Some buffalo we saw with Albie

28th April: Nwambi's elies

Me enjoying the elie sighting at Nwambi Pan

Nwambi pan, an hour or so drive East from camp, is an 800m long expanse of water lined with Fever, Ana and Nyala tree's, filled with hippo's and surrounded by water birds. Oh, and elephants. Lots of them. We walked through the acacia thicket this morning towards the pan, enjoyed a lekker buffalo encounter during which we saw a bull elephant slip behind the bushes some way off. Diverting around the buffalo, we entered stealth mode and, anticipating that the elephant was headed to Nwambi for a drink, went straight there. We were spot on, and both he and our group reached the pan at the same time. Creeping silently now and keeping low, we reposition to sit behind a big fallen tree with a clear view of him at the water's edge. WIth the magic of Nwambi behind him, he drank and splashed in the water, before heading our way. Less than 10m from where we were sitting, the bull had a good scratch against a Fever Tree, itched a cut on his foot, gave us a long, lingering stare, then ambled off. It was a brilliant encounter, my best to date, and one of the many elephant sightings Nwambi never fails to offer!

30th April: Back-up pets: Woody, the Wood Owl

Our wood owl, Woody

I am very sad to report that our beloved baby squirrel died earlier this month. His chances we admit were never great, but he was doing extremely well and Jody in particular did a sterling job keeping him going for so long. Sadly one of the acacia rats stole his syringe which made drip feeding him milk quite difficult, and he ended up passing on from water on the lungs. Terribly sad, lots of tears and we all miss him very much. On a much brighter note, we have a new pet! No rescue attempt with this one though, he turned up all on his own. I'd like to introduce you all to our extremely rare Wood Owl, who we were all shocked to see one day sitting in our tent on one of the ceiling beams, and who has continued to come back every day since. He's absolutely beautiful, with real character and certainly not scared of us, which is bizarre. The only down side of our new pet owl is that he defecates once or twice a day, at random places in the tent. His sitting post changes daily so we can never quite predict where the brown and white splat is going to land, but we have got quite good at covering our beds with raincoats in the mornings, just in case. He hunts by night, and returns by day; he sleeps when we're out and sits and stares at us when we're home. He's absolutely enchanting, with the most incredible deep black eyes, we've all fallen in love with him (except the ladies who clean and cook here at camp, who are terrified of him, because in their Shangaan culture, owl's carry evil spirits!). He's become known by the name of Woody, and as this post goes live today (1st June), he's still sitting in our tent, though has potty trained himself and now kindly poops in the shower. A funny story about that actually - one day Elisa the cleaning lady was washing the shower and he pooped on her head. Whoops, we all got in kak for that!!!

2nd May: Walking with elephants

Today is the day the elie's arrived back in Makuleke in force! In 6 hours of walking I had as many Elephant encounters on foot, we literally bounced from one encounter to another. On the afternoon walk, we saw a breeding herd of 30 or so feeding in Lala Palm flood plain, slowly moving in our direction, where we stood watching them from the watering hole by the windmill. As they got closer, we retreated up a koppie not far away to sit and take in the view of them drinking at the water hole. After they passed, we skooted around behind them and made our way into the fever tree forest.

Elephants in the Lala Palm floodplain

Walking through the head high drop seed pan grass, me walking on tip toes to try check around us as much as possible, we moved into a small clearing and stopped momentarily for one of the students, Sam, to do up her shoelace. Ever vigilant as back up's, the student leading in front suddenly spotted a young bull elephant not far in front of us, and rather crucially that he was walking right for us! With the wind and sun in our favour, he was luckily completely unaware of our presence...though he would be soon if we didn't move! As we turned to retreat though, I spotted another bull to our right feeding in the tall grass, not far at all from the path we'd just walked. Trunk in the air, it meant he had smelt us. Suddenly, we were in a predicament - we couldn't go forward as the young elie blocked our path there, and the one to our right was awfully close to the bath backward. It seemed the safer bet to retreat back toward the elephant that already had picked us up - he seemed fairly relaxed feeding and moving away form our path, whereas we had no idea what the react of the other young bull would be if he saw us. So we decided it was safer to head in his direction, given that he vaguely already knew that we were there. It was the right decision, we were able to move back through the long grass safely, and with all the noise of 8 people walking, he moved off in the other direction. Back at the beginning of the pan, we now had a nice view of the first bull crossing the plain towards the windmill, we suspect to drink. That put him between us and our path home towards camp though. We went onto the road to go around him and also get a better view of him drinking. But as we were moving down the road, we heard series of deep rumblings and branches rustling and breaking to our left, extremely close, and most definitely elephants. ANOTHER breeding herd of elies were at the big water trough, less than 100m away! It was now possible that the bull was following the breeding herd - and again we were in a predicament - you don't want to get between a herd and a bull! We had to decide fast what to do, and Dan took over lead and moved us safely and quickly down the road, with the aim to cross before the bull did. Having crossed without getting crushed, we tried to find him at the water hole but he must have hot footed it having heard the breeding herd as well, so we'd missed him. Exhilarating to have so much excitement on a walk, and certainly some valuable lessons learnt all round.

5th May: Elie bulls in camp

With such an abundance of elies around camp, it was not surprising that at some point they were going to venture into camp. Well last night was the night, and having heard a lot of trumpeting all afternoon, that evening we had two huge elephant bulls wondering through camp. By the time they arrived it was nighttime, and with no electricity in camp, at night that means it is pretty dark! I crept out of my tent and went and spied on the one as it rambled, carelessly feeding along it's way, between the office and kitchen. There, I met Bruce who was stood guarding the satellite! I lay in bed that night listening to cracking sticks and munching all around me, and woke up this morning to find the really nice tree that used to be outside my tent half gone! The following few nights we had more elies in camp, and I nearly walked right into one standing at the stairs of my tent! I sat on the steps and watched him for ages, it is amazing how much more relaxed they are at night and how close you can get. So excited for their continued presence in camp which will become more and more as the winter wears on.

8th May: Welcome to the Makuleke Oval

Someone had a genius idea today to get the cricket bat and ball out, and we enjoyed an epic game of bush cricket in the car park under the Brown Ivory Tree. We set up an empty fuel can on some crates to act as the stumps, and wound white electrical tape around the cricket ball to make it feel like the real thing. Naturally, the rule was that if you hit it too far into the bush you have to go get it yourself, just to prevent the ball getting lost and stuck in the thick acacia's all around camp. I hit one far too hard accidentally and had to go searching, upon which I suddenly stumbled on a pride of lions! Ha, joking, but it has and could happen... it keeps the game just that little bit more exciting! We had some real surprises, with Willem coming out on top with some awe inspiring bowling, Christo and Jaques hitting 6's all over the place, and Mike never quite managing to get more than a few hits (hahah he'll hate me for that). It was brilliant fun, we even stopped for tea as one should when playing cricket...am very much looking forward to game #2.

23rd May: 19 for 7

Long time no write, and its amazing how quickly time has flown. Our jolly group of 19 sadly departed after a hectic few weeks of assessments and a huge amount of walking, which was great for me! In their place, a rather timid group of 7 arrived last week, and the atmosphere in camp couldn't be more different - it is so quiet now! With only 7 students, our walking opportunities as back-up's has been halved as only 2 walks go out per day, rather than 4-6, as they can fit all he students into one group. The game remains lively as ever though, and the floodplain in particular is positively teeming with plains game and elephants. We had some more lions come through camp in the night not so long ago, and though no-one saw them, their tracks passing the stairs to Bruce and Dee's tent spoke for themselves!

Sadly one of the negatives of not walking as much is that our time has, as a result, been filled with heavy duty manual labour, including high pressure hose cleaning tents and fixing the access road to camp, which remains terribly bumpy post floods. Fixing the road, which involves pick-axing the now hardened soil to level the ground, filling in holes with sand (which you have to collect and shovel into a trailer from a nearby dry river bed, then drive back to the hole and shovel it all out again), then driving over the whole section repeatedly to compact and set in place, is definitely not one of my favourite things to do in the bush. Sitting on the edge of the trailer feeling very sorry for myself one day, I wondered why on earth I'd packed up my luxurious life in Dubai in exchange for this horrible back-breaking work. But then I got distracted by the most adorable baby vervet monkey playing the tree's next to me and decided that life wasn't so tough after all!

A definite highlight of this quieter period has been the arrival of Alan McSmith, a freelance instructor to take over from Bruce for a few weeks. I love it when Al comes to camp because we have the most epic walks and incredible elephant encounters - his passion and incredible understanding of elephants makes the experiences all the more memorable. He taught me how to measure and draw out the true size of an elephant based on its tracks alone, and my knowledge of elephants has increased ten-fold. One evening before dinner I went on a "moonlight" stick walk with him - it was full moon and we'd heard elie activity from the study deck so he asked Dan and I if we wanted to go check them out. Walking at night is such an amazing experience - you can hardly see where your walking (no torches) and it is quite incredible how much sharper your hearing sense becomes.

15th May: The Ivory Trail

It is impossible to spend time in Makuleke and not hear about the famous "Ivory Trail" that used to run through the area, centring much of it's activities around "Crooks Corner", which at the time was a true frontier territory, acquiring its name from the number of outlaws living there. It's location, lying to the eastern end of the now Makuleke concession and just 45 minutes from camp, is situated where South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe meet, and was an ideal place for fugitives from justice to skip over the border into another country. Cecil Bernard, South Africa's most notorious ivory poacher, better known by his Shangaan name, Bvekenya (the one who swaggers as he walks), arrived at Crooks Corner in 1910. Born and bought up in Knysna, South Africa, Bernard headed north after becoming fascinated by tales of elephant hunting. He arrived with little knowledge of the area nor hunting, but learnt much about elephants from the local Shangaan people, usually in return for meat and other favours.

With Crooks Corner as his base, Bvekenya operated as an illegal hunter of elephant over vast areas of Portuguese East Africa and Rhodesia. He soon made a name for himself as an elephant poacher and was on the wanted lists of both the Portuguese (Mozambique) and Rhodesian (today Zimbabwe) authorities. Makuleke, where he had a camp, provided a degree of security, as it was at the point of the beacon which marked out the boundary of the 3 countries. He was able to prise the beacon lose, and by moving it a few metres could change the country in which his camp was situated.

At the hub of Crooks Corner was a store named "Makuleke Store", built and owned by Alec Thompson and William Pye. Over the years, the bush has reclaimed most of the places mentioned in TV Bulpins book "The Ivory Trail", but a few signs still exist in the Makueleke concession, namely ruins of this famous Makuleke store, the graves of the memorable characters Hartman and William Pye and a large memorial has been erected for Cecil Bernard. In his book (which I highly recommend you read) Bulpins details the stories and folk lores from the time, and describes tales of Bvekenya and those of a mix of colourful characters, some seeking the solitude of the bush to conduct their activities and others to evade the law. It is said that the poachers who lived there survived on a diet of quinine and whisky, while etching out a living by poaching ivory, blackbirding (illigally recruiting for the mines) and trading animal skins and sjamboks.

With Al's expert knowledge and a few books, we discovered that Harteman contracted sustroke after becoming stuck in a thorn tree. He has been cutting branches from the tree with which to create a sheep kraal, and failed to realize as he threw them to ground that they'd prevent him form climbing down. Bvenkenya later found and rescued him, but he died the day later. Pye died from influenza in 1918. Bvekenya died on his farm in Geysdorp Western Transvaal in 1962. We found Harteman's and Pye's graves recently in the fever tree forest someway between camp and crooks corner - it was an awesome discovery, although they had been documented before, but we all felt a real sense of history. Sitting around the graves and talking about some of the tales from back in the day was brilliant, and decided it must have been hell of a tough existence for the travellers and hunters in the area all those many years ago.

26th May: Lion 1, porcupine nil. Rhino's 1, us 0.

Porcupine quills we found at Hutweni

Cool walk around Hutweni Gorge this morning. We picked up a great set of lion tracks, a male and female walking together. Further down their track we saw a bug pile of porcupine quills. Although porcupines are known to "moult" quills from time to time, they certainly don't lose them all at once. Examining the scene, the quills were surrounded by lion tracks...certainly one nil to the lions I think in this case! Later in the walk, we came across fresh rhino tracks, a mother and calf it looked like, which is hugely exciting as we hardly ever see them. We followed the tracks through the Gorge, found some rhino dung along their trail which we cracked open and tested for temperature and found it still warm! Talk about fresh! We stayed on their tracks for about an hour, but as they moved up into the Mopane hills, we lost them. So frustrating knowing how close they must have been but not seeing them. Later we got reports that one of the guides from The Outpost lodge had a sighting of 2 white rhino not far from our trail - it must have been them!

28th May: Takkie squeek

It has certainly been a long time since we last had a good party at camp, so when Al suggested drinks around the fire and some music we were all very excited. Meatless monday turned out to be a blessing in disguise for our bar bills, as we all finished dinner still feeling rather hungry, but we soon filled the gap with drink. Al disappeared and came back with an empty cereal box which was quite bizarre then went on to explain this hilarious game where you have to pick the box up with your mouth, no hands or knee's can touch the box or the ground. Once you've picked it up successfully, you can tear a section off the box, so over time it gets shorter and shorter. There were some very innovative methods...some spilts, big lunges, Dan did a walking handstand...all very funny! That certainly got the party going, and not long after that, a lady called Jean provided the rest of the evenings entertainment with some very energetic dancing, which we named the "tacky squeek". Absolutely hilarious.

Dan's enrty for the night, written circa 1.30am:

"Everyone is super on sconces and its mooi! I think that this should happen more often that people in camp get hydrated... we must drink beer. It has been proven that beer hydrates you as there is water in beer!"

Haha, thanks Dan. Thank goodness the next morning was a day off for the students and we all got a much needed lie-in!

30th May: The great Elie chase

This morning's walk couldn't have been a better walk to send me off on leave with. We drove to Banynini Pan and walked to a near-by spring. The excitement started just as we got off the vehicle - while the student lead, Heribert was doing the walking brief, a big buffalo duggaboy walked up a game path right towards us. We had to load up our rifles quickly just in case, he smelt us at about 100m or so and moved off. Composure gathered, we set off and enjoyed the beautiful view over the pan and mountains that Banynini never fails to over. The birding was great and we had fabulous sightings of a goliath heron and african spoonbills. We arrived at the spring sometime later and were sitting taking a break when two elephant bulls meandered down to the water to have a drink. We moved back a bit to give them some space - one sloshed around in the mud and had a drink, the sound of the water gurgling down into his tummy was quite amazing. We decided to move away after 30 minutes or so watching them though because the second bull wasn't too comfortable with our presence so we decided to leave him in peace. Heading back to the vehicle, we saw another buffalo and then back at the pan we saw an old elephant bull having a good scratch by the waters edge. We sat on some rocks on a nearby koppie and watched him for ages, and he moved off across the open floodplain which made an incredible view. SHortly after just as we were getting ready to move off, a second elephant popped out of the bushes and flopped down in the reeds for a big mud bath - amazing! The older elie bull didn't seem too impressed with the youngster though, and having come over to investigate, chased him full pelt right across the flood plain! It was hilarious to watch and the most awesome sighting.