2nd June 2012 – Stay at Olifants Camp

2nd June 2012 – Stay at Olifants Camp

As usual we got up at 6am and went for our morning drive. After about 5 minutes we saw a pair of hares on the road. It was too dark to really photograph them but nonetheless good to see.


We drove on. And on. And on. We drove for about 2 hours just stopping once at a viewpoint to have some breakfast and swap who drove and saw nothing except the odd impala every now and then. As we neared. Letaba we started to see a few more impala and witnessed one very frisky male chasing one of his females back and forth across the road; she obviously wasn’t playing ball!


We also saw some giraffes, wildebeest and zebra but all in all it was very quiet. At 9.30am we started to head back towards camp. This was a long quiet road away from the river and both Wayne and I struggled to stay awake! Thankfully we returned to drive beside the river which gave us something to looks at. Suddenly we heard extremely loud roaring sounds and I looked to my right to see 2 male hippos fighting. We pulled over to watch the spectacle. It was clear that one was the current dominant male of the area and one was trying to challenge him. We watched them for around an hour roaring, grunting and opening their jaws as wide as possible as well as swishing their tails and flinging poo as a sign of dominance. Eventually the hippo trying to make this his territory sunk his body under the water leaving just his head out, obviously as a sign of retreat as the main male hippo turned his back on him and flung his poo everywhere as he returned to his pool to rest. It was great to see and definitely made a very quiet morning less dull!

We returned to camp where we relaxed on our patio watching the river. We saw lots of hippos, a herd of bushbuck and a mum with baby impala come to the water. We then had lunch before having an afternoon nap for a few hours. Something I think we both needed!

We then spent the rest of the afternoon watching the river from our patio and ate ice cream and frozen yoghurt for supper! As it got dark Wayne perfected his bat photos and took them from a different angle to get him head on.