On to Safari

The only bad thing about SAFARI was that we had to leave the ship at 4 am, so four groups of us met in the Union at 3:30 am for different trips.

We had a pastry and coffee breakfast, boarded the buses and headed for the airport in Cape Town for a 2 hour flight to Johannesburg.  In Johannesburg, one group peeled off for a bus ride to their destination and the rest of us bumbled around a bit, having to change gates for our charter flight to Hoedspruit.

We finally boarded our flight and landed in Hoedspruit about 1 1/2 hour later.  As we were taxing down the runway, our pilot slammed on brakes and pointed out a pair of cheetas off the runway.  It was a great sighting and start to safari.  The landing strip was formally a military base that now services some local flights and is allegedly the longest runway in the Southern Hemisphere and a backup for the space shuttle.  We were met at the edge of the runway by vans and LandRovers for the various game reserves.

As we headed down the road,we were forced to stop by a herd of Cape Buffalo, the first animal on our list of the "big five".  These are magnificent animals and huge, and we were glad to be in the van.  Our group was headed to the Motswari Private Game Reserve. We arrived after about 1 1/2 hour drive with one view of a zebra along the way--our lone zebra sighting of the week.  They pronounce "zebra" as if it was zebbra.  We were all eyes along the way.

When we arrived, we were given refreshments, introduced to the staff and taken to our bungalow with the warning to not wander out of the unfenced compound.
Motswari is a private reserve that is part of a larger cooperative of reserves and a part of the Greater Kruger National Park Conservancy  The animals wander through all of the areas since they are not fenced.  The guests can only cover areas which have reciprocal agreements.  This does not include the Kruger Park but is very extensive with a huge road and trail network.  We saw vehicles from a number of other reserves and camps.

After a few minutes to settle in, a few of us made it to the conservation talk at 2 pm.  This was immediately followed by a sumptuous lunch served by the singing group of staff who brought it in.  We quickly came to appreciate the culinary skills of Grace, our head cook.  Our only regret after the whole trip was that we didn't get to spend much time interacting with the staff who were all so hard-working and gracious.

Then it was time to load up for our first game drive. Each vehicle has a guide and a tracker.  Andrew was our driver, and Petros was our tracker.  We were also accompanied by Malcolm who was the tour guide that accompanied us on the entire trip.