Weekend 3: Madikwe Game Reserve

This past weekend was definitely the highlight of my (personal) experience here thusfar, and potentially a highlight of my life in general. We spent the weekend at the Mosetlha Bush Camp in the Madikwe Game Reserve (in the Northwest province of South Africa, right on the Botswana border) for a little safari getaway, and it was AWESOME.

I had done a fair amount of research to find a lodge/camp that was affordable (you wouldn’t believe how expensive these safaris can get) and close enough to drive to for a weekend, and after weighing a few options, we settled for the “true bush camp experience” at Mosetlha – no fence, no running water and no electricity; just hanging out under the stars with some animals.

Hartebeest Tent - our home for the weekend!

Inside our tent

Pablo and I left on Friday morning and made the 4-hour drive to Madikwe, parked our car in the designated lot, and were picked up by a nice man named Justice (who would be our guide for the weekend) in a sweet Land Rover safari vehicle, who drove us into the camp. The camp itself was amazing. It only holds 16 people at once, in 9 “tents” (which are more like very comfortable little cabins on stilts, with tented windows). The tents are situated around the dining area (everyone eats together at a long table), the lounge area (which also has the “bar” – basically wine, beer and liquor that you can take as you please, and you just mark down what you take in a ledger under your name, and pay cash at the end of your stay), and the campfire (where all of the food is cooked, and where everyone hangs out at night). The camp really had all of the anmenities that you could want – I honestly didn’t even notice that I was without power or running water all weekend. It was so comfortable and cozy and familial. Every time a new guest arrived, everyone was excited to introduce themselves and learn about what you were doing, what brought you to South Africa, etc. While we were there, an Afrikaans family of 10 was also in camp celebrating the dad’s 60^th, as well as two different French couples and a guy from Reno, Nevada all came and went during our 2.5 days there. Everyone, including staff and guides, was so sweet and friendly.

Communal dining area

"Bar" area of the lounge

Lounge area

So we dropped our stuff in our little home for the weekend and joined everyone for lunch (burgers) at the table. After lunch, we were told to bundle up and take the blankets from our tent for our evening game drive. Before we set out, we were also told to take what we wanted for “sundowners” (again with the cocktails at sunset) on the drive. Justice put them in his little cooler, we hopped in the truck (me, Pablo, and the French couple – the big family took the other truck), and headed out into the bush!

Heading off for our afternoon game drive

The game drives were amazing. Basically you drive around, off-roading like crazy through all of these unmarked rocky trails through the 185,000 acres of the game reserve, looking for animals, birds, anything interesting and noteworthy. The guides are expertly trained in tracking animals, and they would watch tracks on the ground as we drive by, or see how bushes were trampled/eaten, and would know if a certain animal is nearby. Once we found something, they’d usually drive quite close to the animal (depending on the animal, usually 20-30 feet away), turn off the engine, and we’d just sit and observe/take pictures for a bit. It was incredible to watch these huge beasts feeding and interacting with other animals or their babies in the wild. Breathtaking, really. You definitely got the sense that we were quietly infringing on their turf, not the other way around (like at a zoo).

Here’s the full list of what we saw this weekend: baboon, wild dog, African elephant, giraffe, scrub hare, red hartebeest, brown hyena, impala, black-backed jackal, lion, kudu, sable antelope, springbok, steenbok, warthog, blue wildebeest, white rhino and zebra. They were all incredible, honestly, but I think my favorite were the zebra and giraffe (their markings are really spectacular in person, and the giraffe are insanely tall and so graceful to watch) and of course, the lions.

African elephant, and baby feeding

Zebra - one on the left is (very) pregnant

Impala - these were everywhere

Giraffe - so tall!

Blue wildebeest - probably the creepiest-looking animal ever

Kudu - also everywhere

Our first sundowners stop

So, back to the story. On our Friday evening game drive, we saw most of what I listed above, minus the lions. It was awesome! And our stop for sundowners was incredible – on this vast open plain, with a huge group of springboks feeding a few hundred yards away, and a perfect sunset. I enjoyed a delicious Savannah Dry, which is a type of hard cider here that South Africans love (and I see why). We hopped back in the truck, bundled up (the temperature drops a good 20 degrees after dark) and I was surprised to realize that the drive was going to continue for another hour or in the dark. The Land Rover had some pretty powerful

Epic sunset

headlights, and our guide also used a hand-held spotlight that he swung back and forth across the brush and trees as we drove past. And somehow, he still spotted animals! I think he was looking for their eyes to light up as the spot passed over them. So in the darkness, we found a breeding herd of elephants (all females and babies) and a white rhino and her baby at the same watering hole. It was amazing! The baby rhino was only about 4 months old – it couldn’t even really use its feet properly yet, it kept stumbling around trying to keep up with its mother. Unbearably cute.

White rhino and baby that we found at night!

Breeding herd of elephants, drinking

Finally, we headed back to camp. And as we drove in, I saw all these little lights twinkling – the entire camp was lit by lanterns at night! Not to be cheesy, but it was pretty magical. Everyone crowded around the fire to warm up, and shortly after we

Dinner by lantern light

sat down to a latern-lit dinner (of bobotie, which is a traditional South African dish of ground beef topped with a cooked egg mixture; quite delicious). After dinner, everyone grabbed a glass of wine and moved to the fire to keep warm and keep chatting. Around 9PM, staff from the camp brought lovely hot water bottles to everyone, which we then tucked into our beds to keep them warm, old-school style. And shortly after that, we headed to bed to snuggle up with our hot water bottles and get some sleep before our early game drive on Saturday!

The next day, I woke up (freezing cold) to the lantern outside our tent being re-lit around 6AM. We got up, got bundled, had some tea and rusks, and hopped back into our truck for our morning game drive. This time, the French couple had requested a bush walk instead of a game drive (which piqued my interest, but more on that later), so we got a little private drive from Justice. And it turned out to be the best one of the weekend – after driving around in the freezing cold, not seeing much, we plowed straight through some bushes and, boom – lions! A whole family! A male, two females and three cubs were snoozing in the sun. They were absolutely incredible looking, especially the male, whose mane was spectacular. Lions sleep about 18 hours a day (sweet life when you don’t need to worry about predators), so the mom(s) and dad literally just opened one eye at us when we drove up and went back to sleep. But one of the little cubs was a curious fellow and slowly walked right up to us! He sat down, stared for a bit, apparently got bored, and went back to paw at his parents faces and bite his siblings for awhile. It was probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The cubs were playing and falling all over each other while their parents just swatted them away. I could have watched them all day, but sadly we drove away after about a half hour and stopped somewhere scenic for more tea, rusks and fruit. But, good news, after that we drove right to some more lions (another female and cubs from the same male we saw earlier – what a player) in a different part of the reserve! These cubs were less friendly, they just eyed us from the far side of their mother. Still, a beautiful sight. You can tell just by watching them how incredibly fierce and powerful they are. We saw some more awesome animals on that drive, but the lions really stuck in my head as the highlight.

Curious lion cub, coming to check us out

King of the Jungle, taking a snooze

Annoying Dad as he tries to sleep

Second group of lions that we found - hello little one!

We arrived back at camp around 11AM, and sat down for brunch (eggs, toast and boerwurst – a traditional South African “farmers sausage” which is very tasty) with the full group to chat and compare what we saw on our drives. Then we had a few hours of downtime, which I filled by reading a book in the warm sun by the firepit. A pretty perfect way to spend the

My sunny spot on Saturday afternoon

afternoon, if you ask me. Around 3PM we sat down for lunch (small sandwiches and tomato soup) before filling the cooler for sundowners and heading out on our afternoon game drives.We saw some great elephants on this drive – a bunch of males hanging out by a watering hole, slowly shoving each other around to get the best trunk space. And then we saw the female half of the pack (apparently they hang out separately), which was comprised of about 20 females and babies of all sizes.

We then stopped for our sundowners in another beautiful clearing, but as soon as we had opened our drinks, Justice asked us to “please get back in the vehicle right now,” as a white rhino and her baby had appeared about a hundred feet away. We climbed in, and he managed to drive us a bit farther away – without spilling the drinks out on the front of the hood! She went on her way to a watering hole nearby, and we quickly finished our drinks to go find her again. We did, and we watched her and her cute little baby drink for a bit – and saw a jackal (which is much nicer than I imagined, sort of like a large fox) in the process. We finished the rest of our drive, seeing more awesome game in the process, and headed back to camp for dinner (steak, chicken and boerwurst – I told you they love meat here) and repeated the enjoyable wine/fire/hot water bottle process from the night before.

Male elephants at the watering hole

Breeding herd of elephants on the move

Sundowners spot on Saturday

The white rhino and her baby that almost chased us away!

Earlier on Saturday, we had asked Bart, the camp leader, if he might be able to take us on a bush walk the next morning, as we saw the French couple do on their last morning. He agreed, and so on Sunday morning, we left good ol’ Justice and drove out with Bart. We parked on the top of a valley in a different part of the reserve, he loaded his rifle (which he’s required to carry when setting out on foot), and off we went. In total, we hiked about 3.5 miles, down into the valley and up the far side, so high that we could see the entire reserve, which was absolutely

View from the highest point on our hike

beautiful. Along the way, Bart educated us on animal tracks/droppings, trees, birds, and other things we saw along the way.

We stopped at the highest point of the far side of the hill for some dried fruit and water, and while we were up there, Bart spotted two white rhinos in the valley below (actually, he heard the call of the birds that stay with rhinos, eating the bugs on them). So we decided to track them. We hiked back down into the valley, and he told us to be as quiet as possible and stay directly behind him as we walked. We got about 100 feet away from them, and paused (we also noticed there was a kudu standing nearby). He then asked us to step silently (avoid any leaves or branches underfoot), and not even let our arms brush the sides of our jackets. And so we crept another 50 feet closer to them, and crouched down to watch them from the small thicket we were standing in. The sun was facing the rhinos, who were lying down, and the wind was

Bart, in his short safari shorts, watching for game

blowing toward us, so the rhinos had yet to notice we were there. Bart asked us “how brave we were feeling,” and I short of gave a panicked shrug, and so we stood to get even closer. Let me now pause to tell you how scary/awesome it is to be standing, on foot, in front of two ENORMOUS white rhinos, in a huge valley, knowing that if something goes wrong, there is literally nothing I can do. I can’t beat them up, I can’t outrun them, Bart can’t even shoot both of them with the one bullet in the rifle (if it came to that).

So, we crept closer. And after we had taken about 3 steps, the following series of events occured, seemingly simultaneously: the little

The two white rhinos we spotted from high above

rhino bird starts chirping, the kudu starts barking, and Bart suddenly crouches down and ducks, so we (obviously) do the same – the rhinos had stood up! And they turned and went running into the brush (and you can imagine how thunderously loud that was). And then it sounded like they were running back toward us, but we couldn’t see them. Thankfully their steps eventually faded away. I was about to fall over, and even Bart turned around and said “now that really gets the blood flowing, doesn’t it?” so at least I knew I wasn’t a total wuss for being mildly terrified. It turns out that the little bird apparently had alerted the rhinos to a predator nearby, so they jumped up and ran away, but the bird doesn’t exactly tell them where to go, so they just ran around spastically for awhile until they thankfully decided to run in the opposite direction from us.

The freakiest part to me was actually that the kudu kept barking for a few seconds after the rhinos left (apparently to alert other kudu to a predator in the area), and Bart said, “now, I really want to know what that kudu was barking at. Because I don’t see anything.” So we stood still for a few more minutes, trying and failing to hear anything in the deafening silence. Bart decided that it was safe to continue, but of course for the rest of the hike, any sort of lurking shadow in the dense brush looked to me like a lion waiting to chomp on my limbs. And to cap it all off, as we reached the truck, Bart noticed that there was a leopard print covering one of my sneaker prints from that morning – so a leopard had followed us into the valley from the truck, but we never saw it. So I guess we weren’t the only people tracking something that morning. Slightly scary, but mostly amazing.

Thoroughly starving and exhausted, we headed back to camp for our last meal, and amazing breakfast scramble of sorts. We sadly packed up, said goodbye to our new friends and our lovely home for the weekend, were driven back to our car, and headed back to Pretoria

Baboon crossing

(seeing some baboons on our way out of the reserve!). It was absolutely the highlight of my time in South Africa to date, and like I said, probably a life highlight as well. I honestly hope that everyone (who likes animals, anyway) has the chance to do that in their lifetime. It was fantastic.

Oh – and we managed to squeeze in a quick cultural tour of Pretoria when we got back, including the Voortrekker monument (memorializing farmers who left the Cape Colony around 1830 to move into what is now the interior of South Africa in what was called the “Great Trek”), Church Square (where the Justice Building is located, where Nelson Mandela was tried and sentenced to Robben Island) and the US Embassy (just for fun – and it’s HUGE). Check, check, check.

Less than two weeks left, and only one more weekend (which I’ll be spending in Joburg)! Time is really flying by now. More to come…