One of the great pleasures of being in South Africa is going off to a game reserve for a few days - last weekend I went to Madikwe national park with my daughters and my brother and family. Madikwe is in the North-West province, up against the Botswana border - in fact for the last half of the journey you follow signposts to Gabarone, the Botswanan capital, although the road is practically deserted. Madikwe is actually land reclaimed from mostly abandoned farms and repopulated with animal life since 1991 - so there isn't the density of wildlife that we saw in the Kruger, but on the other hand we saw the "Big Five" in a mere four game drives: a leopard happily chewing its way through a kudu, fifteen rhino including a baby (we counted), dozens of elephants, a herd of fifty buffalo at a water hole, and several lions (we nearly ran into a couple crossing the track; there was a Mexican standoff for a while as they debated whether to go round or over us; in the end they went round). The game rangers have set themselves something of a challenge by hyping up the Big Five, raising the expectations of their customers that they'll always see these animals - but when they're roaming around in 75,000 hectares they're not necessarily easy to find.
To be honest, I'm finding that the novelty of driving up to wild animals and taking photos of them is wearing off a little - the first time a lion looks at you from a few metres away with no barriers between you it's certainly chilling, but after a while you realise that there's no danger (or not much; lions are generally too intelligent to attack jeeps) - and after half an hour or so of watching a leopard having his dinner I start to think that the experience is not really all that different from watching your domestic tabby picking through a few chicken bones. (Although some people get lucky and see REALLY exciting things - for example see this battle in the Kruger park - do watch all of this, it's extraordinary.)
On the other hand it's a constant delight just to be out in the bush, driving around, seeing the landscape and the wonderful sunrises and sunsets, with no responsibilities (not even looking out for animals - the rangers are much better at that than us tourists will ever be) and a sense of achievement when you do actually come across a fellow mammal or two. A great experience.
Above: shadow of the intrepid explorers; an elephant; the deck of the my room (animals just below - I saw impala, zebra, an elephant and dozens of birds - and you're instructed to keep your windows closed when you're out otherwise the baboons come in and steal stuff); a sunset.
