An elephant at my gate!

It was a busy week with animals here at Amukela.
On my way to and from school I saw giraffes on a daily basis. because of all the rain last week they prefer the higher area of the Marula road with less mud.

 A warthog family comes in our camp regularly to eat from the grass. Normally this only happens in winter when food is scarce but this family doesn't seem to mind my presence.








I also see lots of zebra's and this curious kudu on my way home.






Then some elephants come to visit our waterhole. It is always nice to see these giants but when the biggest one takes a dust bad right in front of my open gate I can't help but wonder if I should have closed it...

rain and raging rivers

After a reasonable dry rainy season we got lots of rain in the beginning of March.
In 2 days we had over 200 millimeter rain and the dry rivers started to flow. The leeuspruit, that runs through our camp, was one of them. The first day it was already a nice stream and the kids loved playing in the mud.

When we got more rain that night the water flowed over the bridge at the Sable road leading to our lodge. Luckily that morning when the children had to go to school the water was down enough already to cross. The debris on the bridge showed how high the water has been. one of the trees in our riverbed was leaning over quite a bit and we had to cut some branches to be able to cross our bridge.

The Zandspruit river in Raptors View took longer to go down again and lots of children could not come to school that day. Although it is dry now for quite a while already and it was even hot today and yesterday, the Leeuspruit is not entirely dried up yet.
The road on our side of the reserve is a bit damaged but not too bad. At other places the road was inaccessible for a few days.

Luckily the dry winter lies ahead of us now.