(Note: For the next number of postings I am not keeping strictly to exact days. Rather I am combining things that happened from our arrival in our safari camp through the time we left it. The pictures that appear in any one posting may have been taken on any one of the days from August 30 through September 2, but they tell a story that is not chronological. For example, I saw lions on two separate days during my game drives but it really makes sense to combine the photos and discussion of all the lions in one posting. And a bit later, when we get to the actual animals, I may also include photos taken not here but on the mini-safari in Botswana, indicating when that is the case. After all, an elephant in Botswana is pretty much indistinguishable from one in South Africa although I would never say if you've seen one elephant you've seen them all.)
In this spirit, let’s start by looking at life in camp. As noted in the previous posting, we were picked up at the airport near Nespruit (although I never exactly placed there airport there geographically) and drove some 2-1/2 hours along a paved two-lane road to the turnoff to our camp. The “office” of the camp (and of its sister camp located about 1 mile away from our camp) is down a fairly decent road leading to a building which contains an administrative office and, of course, a gift shop. From there were are separated from our luggage, which is placed in one four-wheel drive vehicle and we are all loaded into another such vehicle. (The vehicles used here, the same are used for the game drive, will be discussed as part of the game drive logistics.)
We then go down the road further, following the signs (well, there was one at least) to the camp.
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| Sign to Camp |
Fortunately our drivers work for the camp, so they know their way around the various roads here. I use the term road in a fairly loose sense (which will be covered in more detail during the discussion of game drives). Eventually we arrive at the main “building” of the camp.
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| Main Building |
The animals depicted are the big five (discussed in the previous post with the top row containing the elephant and rhinoceros, the middle row the cape buffalo, and the bottom row the lion and leopard.
To orient you here, there is a dropoff just beyond the front of the photo, which is where the various vehicles park. You can walk up stairs to a walkway which you can see in the bottom right of the photo. Further along is a room which is open to the elements on two sides. This serves as the bar, lounge, and dining room. Behind this room is a kitchen which is enclosed on all four sides (probably required to keep food from curious four-footed animals). There is electricity in this room (except when there isn’t – to be discussed in a bit)
As I mentioned, this building houses the dining room for the camp. Meals are served family style and while the table configuration does change a bit from time to time, it often is as shown below with all the people currently in camp around one big table.
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| Group at Dinner |
(By the way, that bearded fellow in the front on the right is not wearing a green dress shirt. It is rather a safari-color-approved, mosquito repellant impregnated fabric designed more or less for safari wear. He always was the height of fashion. For further proof note the stylish hat on the back of his chair -- also mosquito repellant and color-approved.)
This dining room as you can see is open on the right hand side, and the kitchen entrance is off to the left near the end of the room. And next to the door leading to the kitchen is a small wine cellar. Immediately to the photographer’s left is a similarly sized room, open to the back of the photographer, which is the bar and lounge and with the door (which we saw in the previous photo) all the way to the photographer’s left. Some of the people seated at the table are from our group, some are from other groups, and some are staff.
Just to the right of the dining room, on a small deck, is what passes for a swimming pool.
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| Swimming Pool (Sort of) |
The pool is not very deep and is not heated. And I would remind you that we’re at the end of August, winter down here in the Southern Hemisphere. So, no, none of us tried it.
Also out on another part of the deck, is a fire ring where, at night, you can gather round to talk, drink, or just relax. But I will remind you once again that it’s winter down here in the southern hemisphere and once the sun goes down so does the temperature, fairly rapidly. Although it tends to not get below 50.
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| Fire Ring on the Deck |
Now, those of you who have been paying attention have probably noted two things: (1) I haven’t mentioned any sleeping rooms, and (2) the name of this place includes the words “tented safari camp.” So there are no sleeping rooms but, rather, tents – variously called Nehru and Hemingway style tents on the websites but it appears (and I can only base this on the relative number of hits on Google) these are what are known as Hemingway tents. There are twelve of them scattered around two sides of the main building. Here is ours.
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| Our Tent from a Distance |
If you look carefully, you can see another tent in the background.
Now let me remind you that we are in a game reserve, with no fences between us here and the rest of the game reserve, and no fences between us and the entire Kruger National Park. Yup – wild animals of all types – lions, leopards, elephants, cape buffalo, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, monkeys, warthogs, hyenas, and who knows what else – with nothing between us and them except land and tent canvas. The snakes are generally not about in wintertime. And, fortunately, there is a lot of land between us and the animals – usually. Although there are monkeys in camp fairly regularly (more on that in a bit) and one day several of us were told when we were in the main building that we couldn’t go back to our tent quite now because there were some elephants in the way. And the rule was that at night when you wanted to go back to you tent it always had to be accompanied by a staff member. And there was a whistle in the tent for emergencies. And never a problem when we were there in this regard.
We’ll talk about the rules when out on a game drive when we get there. For now, let’s look at little closer at the tent, first along the side of the tent.
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| Tent from the Side |
The tent as you can see in on a platform, and by the slant of the platform we can tell that the ground is slanted. At the far left of the photo is our “living room.” We’ll see it in more detail in the next picture. The middle part of the tent contains the bed with mosquito netting (which you can just barely see at the left opening to that room. The right third of the tent, with more substantial walls, is the bathroom with toilet, sinks, shower with quirky hot water supply, and even a safe bolted to the concrete. There is running water and there is electricity in the tent (usually). In fact, in what is becoming truer and truer in various places in the world, there are British and European plug adapters as well as South African (but not US adapters). The current is all 220 volts.
So, let’s take a closer look at the front of the tent:
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| Front of the Tent |
Here is the front view of the tent with the elegant grand staircase leading up to the platform. There is an overall canvas roof overhanging over the main tent. The front room of the tent here has both the canvas and netting sides rolled up and behind it is the bedroom which you can just see with the mosquito netting down.
Now lets take a closer look at the front two rooms.
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| Front Two "Rooms" of Tent |
In the bottom left of the photo is a box that is quite important. It is a fairly simple wooden box with some shelves inside and a latching top. The latch protects whatever is inside the box from marauding monkeys. The monkeys, who cavort around the camp, are attracted by food and shiny objects. They won’t enter your tent when you’re there (or at least they didn’t in our experience) but they will come and help themselves when you go, and very soon after you leave. We diligently used the box and didn’t suffer any losses to the monkeys.
In the background of the photo is the bed which has the mosquito netting down. Kruger is a malarial zone and the mosquito is the vector for passing malaria. In winter there are not supposed to be mosquitos. Nonetheless, we did use the mosquito netting and took anti-malarial medicine prophylactically.
As you can also see there is a very small couch, a chair, a desk, and a lamp that I can only describe as whimsical.
The camp was basic but pleasant although it did get a bit cold (in the low 50s or high 40s) at night and there was no heating in the tents.
I’ve made allusions to electricity in camp. For the most part of two days we had no electricity because the cable between the two camps had a break. The cable is about 1 mile in length and lightly buried and finding the place where the cable was broken was not simple – or at least that is what appeared to be the case. One problem was getting the probably only person in the area who could diagnose and treat the problem.
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| The Most Important Person When the Camp Electricity is Out |
Each night during the power outage they would take camera batteries and chargers from us and take them over to the other camp for overnight charging. (The other camp had electricity because it was closer to the source and our electricity came down the cable from that camp.) The kitchen primarily used gas and thus didn’t have a significant problem. And the lighting around the dining, lounge, and bar area was well handled by candles.
And, while we’re on the issues of technology, there was no cell phone coverage anywhere around the camp.
Next: An anatomy of a game drive.
Link to Full Resolution Photos
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