Entabeni Safari-The rest of the story

Hope this post will be adequate.  Our time and access has been limited so I wrote this on the bus today as we traveled from Johannesburg to Kruger National Park.  Long bus ride with just a few side trips.  More on that tomorrow I hope.

Camp Entebeni - Place of the Mountain



This post is going to show Friday's date but it was really written Tuesday, 8/26.  
Good news-Bad news
We were surprised to learn that we would have internet access.  But the elephants came thru and tore up the wires.  TWICE!  I'm gonna ask Comcast is elephants are the problem should we lose service again.

So named for the Entebeni Mountain.



Lakeside Camp-Entebeni

View from the lodge and main dining hall

After a lovely 4 hour ride north along the MAIN Highway in Africa going all the way from Cape Town north, we arrived at Entebeni Reserve.  This is a privately owned 50,000 acre preserve where you can find most of every kind of animal you want to see in Africa, including crocs and hippos in the lake visible from our front porch..  We were cheerfully greeted by the roving bands of monkeys that are very playful and MUST be keep out of your room.  We are told that they like to get in and wreck havoc. 



This ain't no tent.

High tea

Greeted by the staff with a delicious fruity drink we were give our ROOM assignments.  Yes..luck was with us and we were all given cottages instead of the tents we had anticipated.  Not sure why but were to learn later in the evening that this was a very welcome surprise. 

After a light lunch consisting of plenty of fresh fruit, beef wraps and chicken pizza, we were given a little free time before high tea and out first game drive to commence at 4pm. 

Promptly at 4 we departed the main lodge in 2-9 passenger open land-cruisers as our guide, Phineas, gave us a few of the safari dos and don’ts  The airy, warm and dusty ride was much like a roller coaster thrill ride with bumps and turns at every corner.  No upside down turns however.  

Our first sighting was a lone giraffe in the distance but it was quickly followed by a variety of antelope, zebra, wildebeests, rhino, elephant, warthogs and many kinds of birds.  Suffice it to say that I took 160 pictures on our drive and Bob took another 100.  We were thrilled and our guides said that it had been a very lucky drive as you never know what animals are going to be where.



A face only a mother could love.

Wildebeests became such a common sighting that
they can become a nuisance by not moving from the
 road quickly enough.

The highlight of our drive had to be the encounter of a band of 6 elephants (1 male and 5 females) with 3 rhinos (mom and baby and another young one.)  We easily sat and watched them interact for 30 minutes before they parted.  Initially we had seen the rhinos among a band of zebra.  But we didn’t stay to watch them as Phineas has spotted elephants in the distance and we were driving to intercept them as they were more likely to move on and the rhino and zebra would stay put.  (And now I can predict that behavior too, as you will see elephant dung literally everywhere in the reserve and rhino dung in only one area.)



The elephant raised and dropped
this branch several times.  But the rhino
held steady.

As we approached the elephants a lone young male came forward with 5 females of varying ages behind him.  Soon after we stopped to watch the elephants, the rhino group came up on our left, spotting the elephants.  In this faceoff it was hard to tell who the victor would be.  A large female, the matriarch of this group, picked up a dead tree branch and began waving it up and over her head in a show of force at the rhinos, whose leading female held her ground.  The elephant did this several times, always dropping the branch but never throwing it.  The rhino continued to hold steady with her extremely large and pointy horn facing the elephants.  Eventually the elephant leaders turned tail and went around the rhinos.  With the rhinos now taking off on their path, the elephants playfully entertained us some more.  There was a lot of interaction between the young elephants with friendly jousting and cavorting.

As the sun was dropping in the sky we headed up to high ground to park and watch the most magnificent sunset and then headed back to camp.



Mom and baby

Boys will be boys.

This gives you an idea just close these guys got.

 Greeted with hot chocolate by the staff we then headed out back to dinner, a braai …BBQ…by a roaring fire.  Traveling back to camp was a very cold experience.  We had been warned and expecting the temp to drop after sunset but you have to experience it to fully understand.  We returned to our room, chasing a group of impala away from our front door to find our WARM beds waiting for us.  The turndown service here includes turning on your heated mattress pad and electric blanket. 

Time 8:30 pm.  Off to bed.  Game drive tomorrow morning at 6:30am.

Number 6 and counting...

Yes we made it safely to the dark continent and it was dark when we arrived at 5:30 pm.  Such a change, but it is winter here.  Temp in the mid 60's. We did survive the plane ride and it wasn't as bad as expected.  The refuel stop in Dakar was 8 hours into the flight so it broke it up nicely.  Did not deplane but got a chance to really stretch and move around. 

As I was packing someone must have been looking over my shoulder. I've never done this before but I split our clothes and put some of both Bob's and mine in each suitcase.  Perhaps I jinxed myself as guess what happened...yup.  No luggage for Linda.  So after holding up the whole group once again, I filed a lost luggage report and headed to the hotel.  An hour later I got a phone call (gotta love current technology) from another hotel and it seems like one of their guests mistakenly took my luggage. Now he must have really been wiped after the plane ride as mine is very uncommon and it does have this brightly colored tag that says Travelin' Trio.  Guess I should have had my 'Not Yours" tag on it instead. But it relaxed me some knowing that I would have it soon.  OK, I guess the martini helped some too.

Had a very nice dinner and off to our room by 9:30.  Have met some of our group but not too much socializing as everyone was pretty tired. 

Hard to see but that is the shower in the corner of the room.
Very stylish glass enclosure.

Our hotel room is beautiful and very modern and yes those are twin beds.  Despite the comfortable beds, our body clocks are really off and we are wide awake now at 3am.  Better try to sleep though as the wild things are calling and we want to be ready for safari camp starting tomorrow. 

Back soon.

All our bags are packed, we're ready to go...

Told the cab driver we were going to Washington DC for a couple of days.  After loading 120+ pounds of luggage, do you think he believed us? 

So the first leg is done...the easy one.  Well not so easy as we were responsible for holding up the plane for 30 minutes.  Not our fault...for some strange reason when the ticket agent signed us in he did not enter our passports.  At the gate they were unable to do it.  It took 5 of them to finally get it right.  Bob's reservation kept looking for a different passport.  Guess that must be the one from the other wife.

Have visited the duty free shop for just a quick purchase...any guesses???? And not a little lunch and we are ready to sit for the next 17 hours.  Luckily the plane isn't full and the lady was very accommodating and gave us some excellent seats...we hope. Next stop Dakar, Senegal for technical stop (read that as gas stop) Johannesburg later today...no tomorrow.

Editorial note...already missing my travel buds.  This luggage tag just doesn't tell the story.

 

 

 

Ready, Set...Go!

We are in countdown mode now.  Only 24 days to get everything organized and done here at home. We're not sure how regular we'll be with our blog postings as WIFI is iffy in many of our scheduled locations, especially while on safari.

Hope you follow and enjoy our travels.