Flora

Before Timbavati stops resonating in my mind quite so much, a final post on the plants - the summer in SA is also the rainy season, so the reserve was very green, with an amazing richness and variety of plant life which sometimes changed radically from one kilometre to the next, depending on soil type, proximity to water, dominant undergrowth etc. In fact, the density of vegetation made it difficult to spot the animals - apparently in winter it's much easier, and the animals are allso more active during the day as it's cooler and they're hungrier - and winter is the dry season so the smaller watering holes dry up and you can stake out a pond at dusk and watch all the animals coming to drink (so it's well worth visiting at any time of the year, friends and relatives!).

I was expecting more open space - and in fact other areas of the Kruger apparently have more savannah (and vast herds of ruminants), while Timbavati has lots of trees. Walking through the bush can be painful - many of these plants have very sharp thorns. Many trees are in flower, and if you look closely at the ground there are hundreds of species of small plants also in flower, some of them with spectacular colours, in miniature. I asked the ranger if he ever had botanists visiting the lodge - anyone who was more interested in the flora than the fauna - he said yes, once, he'd had a couple who only wanted to look at plants - and he "learned an awful lot from them"; but most people just want drive around until they see all the Big Five (elephant, rhino, leopard, buffalo, lion) - and miss the more rooted stuff all around them.

A few examples of plants above.