(Exiting) encounters in the bush

Since I live here in the South African bush I regularly have unexpected, nice and sometimes exciting encounters. A nice encounter for example was the giraffe mother with baby that was on the road when I brought Niels to school the other day. The impalas, zebras and wildebeests that I saw on my way back are in the same category. In the seven years that we now live in the Balule Nature Reserve I have had many of these encounters with different animals while driving to and from Hoedspruit or just looking from our terrace. Even after seven years I still find it very special to see animals passing by from my office window.

Unexpected was the elephant that came to our waterhole last week. I walked out off the office

and all of a sudden a huge grey figure came out of the bushes. He drank a little and then wandered off slowly again while eating. In this category also falls the herd of over a hundred buffalos that turned up at our waterhole a few times in the past year. In February I brought Niels to his school, that is located in a reserve as well, and there were two wild dogs on the road at not even 50 metres from his class! Or what to think of the leopard that walked by our waterhole in the light of the spotlight one night, while our guest were having dinner on the terrace. But the most unexpected and best encounter ever, is still the one with my sister in 2009 when she came to South Africa for the television program Onverwacht Bezoek (unexpected visitor)!

There were also exiting (and a little scary) encounters. There was the cobra behind Niels’ toy box on our terrace. With a long stick we managed to chase him away eventually. We have quite a bit of experience in the bush and sometimes go for a little walk. Despite the experience it is exciting and sometimes a little scary) to meet one of the Big Five on foot. Io one almost came eye to eye with a buffalo and once an elephant was blocking my way into the camp so I had to walk around. Although I have seen lions many times already form our car or even open game vehicle, I had (luckily) never met them on foot. Until this year… Corné and I went for a little walk late in the afternoon. We were only five minutes from the lodge when we heard a growl and at about 30 metres a lioness jumped up and walked away. We stopped and carefully watched if we saw any other lions. We were both excited and careful but not really scared. We didn’t see any more lions but took no risk and slowly walked back to the lodge. There we quickly jumped on our Landrover to have another look. We found two lionesses and two young males a little further down the road. It was an exciting and fantastic experience!

Regards from the bush,
Miriam