Ten go to Pondoro

2/10/2012, Malule private reserve, South Africa

About two and a half hours up the road from Sabi Sand is the Balule private reserve that ajoins Kruger park. A forty minute teeth-rattling drive from the main gate gets you to Pondoro, which is reputed to be the cream of the crop of the lodges in that area. We had three nights to look forward to.

Our party of six swelled to ten as we met up with Neha (Sej's sister), her friend Prash, and Digby and Margie (Charlie's uncle and aunt). The banter cranked up to eleven, and we were away for surely the least-reverent safaris ever undertaken.

Our safari crew of Mark and Eric was a completely different flavour to Simbambili. We had the sense that Mark would drive around the bush, waiting for radioed notice of animal sightings. Periodically he'd let fly a radio burst of "Robbie-Robbie-Robbie" (the lodge's senior guide), or "Sam-Sam-Sam"/"Greg-Greg-Greg" (other local guides), and this triple callout was seized on by the peanut gallery (ie the ten of us).

Calls of jafi-jafi-jafi, wine-wine-wine, dinner-dinner-dinner were frequent, as well as our attempts at Afrikaans-accented "Robbie-Robbie-Robbie" (Prash won the prize for best accent, though it emerged that he'd been working on it for quite a few years). It got to the point when Neha outright asked Mark "so who's Sam-Sam-Sam?". To his credit, he eventually got into it ("pleasure-pleasure-pleasure").

Eric, our tracker, was nowhere near the calibre of Mumps, and things occasionally got a bit tense between him and Mark. Nevertheless, Eric got into the spirit of another of our traditions: the old "hands in the air" trick borrowed from rollercoasters. There were many watercourses to be descended, and up went hands from throughout the vehicle....and, occasionally, from Eric on his bonnet-mounted tracker's seat. Even Mark let go of the wheel on one or two occasions to join in. One can only wonder what the Germans/Americans/English/Chinese in other vehicles made of this.

The food was even better than Simbambili. Finally, we started to sample the local fare. Ostrich and impala made appearances, as did mielle-pap (a white maize derivative that we were later told needed to be eaten every five days at a minimum to maintain ones African-ness). We were treated to excellent service, though it must be noted that it was less personal than Simbambili. The breakfast buffet groaned under the weight of offerings, and each morning the menu of hot offerings changed. The hunter's omelette, egg & bacon mini-pizza and beans with olives and mushroom were highlights. Small wonder that after a 4.45am wakeup call, safari and breakfast Andrew opted out of morning safari walks following breakfast.

We never scoped out the "comprehensive wine list", but selections from the standard list proved excellent. Pinotage again, pinot noirs (a little thin, though one smelled of bacon), a very good chardonnay with the toasty notes so craved by Tracey and Henry, syrah of quality, chenin blanc at lunch and, for the leavetaking breakfast, some rather decent blanc-de-blancs in the "cap du classique" style. Pretty much everything was from the Stellenbosch region, which seems synonymous with South African wine. We envy the others who were off to that area subsequently. We also continued our tradition of shots of Amarula in our morning game drive coffee stop.

Somehow, in between fixing punctures, being shown how to harvest naturally-occurring toilet paper (although the lesson was clearly not completely taken in, as Mark observed that a sample shown by someone would "tear your anus" - you have to hear this said with an Afrikaans accent to get the humour), bagging one another in true Australian style, critiquing each others' tree impersonation (apparently "jazz hands" don't look much like foliage) and the ongoing joke duel between Charlie, Digby, Tracey and Henry (others joined in at times, but found it hard to plumb the scatalogical depths managed by the Foul Four), we we even managed to see some animals.

The range was extraordinary, surpassing in variety what we'd seen at Simbambili. Fewer birds, and only one leopard, but on two occasions we saw four of the "big five" on a single safari. Both black and white rhinos treated us to their company, a close encounter with a young bull elphant at dusk illustrated the perils of the bush by night, and a local band of six lion brothers meant that sightings of males were more often than not of several at once.

Safari 1
Large male leopard, giraffe, elephant at dusk, water buck

Safari 2
Water buck, kudu, giraffe, male lion, wildebeest, herd of Cape buffalo

Safari 3
Giraffe, White rhino, puncture

Safari 4
2 male lions, elephant, cape buffalo, black rhino, giraffes, puncture,

Monkeys raid hen,sej

Safari 5
5 male lions, zebras, giraffes, tree squirrels

We skipped one of our afternoon safaris to go to Maholoholo Rehabilitation Centre...not for alcoholics or drug users as our host advised; though he did mention someone drunk turned up injured one day following a brawl, they did treat his injuries before sending him back into the wild :-)

Maholoholo takes in injured wildlife, treating those that can be and returning them to reserve. Those animals that can't be released for various reasons (eg change of scent such that their former pride won't recognise them as a friend) are kept at the centre. We were first shown the feeding of the wild painted dogs. Digby was selected to wheel the impala carcus into the cages with the protection of a guide holding a stick (not a slingshot this time). The dogs tore it to pieces in seconds in a feeding frenzy whilst making strange chuckling noises.

Baby white and black rhino, cleaver honey badger, lions, leopards, no spiky haired baby cheetahs due to potentail TB. Feeding vultures. Food cages.


[pictures to come, bandwidth poor]