Kings Camp

We got up early this morning and headed towards Kings Camp, back to luxury. Our room is huge. We were all pretty dirty after spending the night in the blind so we headed for the shower.

The room is huge and beautiful. This is the first room that I have ever been in that has three showers and a claw foot tub. Two of the showers are out in a courtyard next to a small garden with a wall around it that prevents anybody from looking in. It is kind of crazy going outside to take a shower. Should you put on sun screen before or after your shower?

We headed out on our first game drive at Kings Camp and saw some amazing stuff, five young lions that had taken down a large Kudu. Most of the Kudu was gone but the lions were kicked back and enjoying their meal.

We found a young leopard relaxing in a tree, our first really good leopard sighting. We finished up the drive with a pack of wild dogs, our guide (Patrick) said it is very rare to see wild dogs, there are only about 160 left in the park. This was a pack of 17 dogs, which represents about 10% of the total population within the park.

The next morning we headed out at 5:30am in search of the pack of dogs. After some time we found them lounging around in some grass. We wanted to see them hunt, since Patrick told us that they are one of the most feared animals by their prey. These dogs will chase an animal for more then 5 kilometers. Since they run in a large pack, the younger dogs will work to tire the prey while the older dogs circle around and are ready with a fresh pair of legs. The result is the highest kill rate on the savannah, about 80%.

We sat and watched these dogs for over an hour hoping they would go on a hunt. Finally they got up and started out. They move quickly, sweeping the landscape and covering a large swath of territory.

After another hour of following these guys they decided to settle down again, so we left hoping to pick them back up on the night drive. Late that afternoon we picked the dogs up again but they were fat and lazy, obviously they were eathing their lunch at the same time we were eating ours.

We worked the area finding the usual cape buffalo, kudo, impala and a lazy rhino. Checked on the lions still working their kill, by this time it was really ripe and difficult to watch them eat with a zillion flies and the stench of decaying kudo.

As we headed back towards camp we came across another rhino. We watched him grazing, about the time our wild dogs came along. The dogs thought they might have rhino for dinner, the rhino had different plans. The dogs would swarm the rhino and the rhino would turn a charge the dogs, this went on for a few minutes, with a lot of whining by the dogs and hoof scratching by the rhino. It became a game once both animals realized neither one of them was going to win the battle, but it was an incredible interaction between the species that is very rare to see.

The food is awesome here at Kings camp, breakfast is after our 5:30am game drive, lunch around 2pm and dinner at 8pm. Before dinner each night the guests get together in the bar and share animal stories.

Early the next morning we hit the trail again. It looked like it was going to be a slow day, no sightings for the first hour and a half. Finally Patrick tracked down a 10 foot croc that was sitting on a nest. We were out of the Land Rover and on foot when Patrick said to look to the right there was the crock about 20 feet away. Being between the croc and the river was a bit scary knowing that at any time the croc could have jumped off that nest and had human kabobs.

At one point the crock started to move and Patrick suggested that if he started our way, where we should run. I probably wouldn’t have mattered much since a croc can move at 40 KPH for short distances. There have been several local incidents of people being killed or maimed by crocs.

We picked up the tracks of an elephant and started tracking it. We spent about 30 minutes searching and were just about to give up when another safari group told us the elephant had just crossed behind our vehicle. The sneaky devil had backtracked on us.

When we drove up on this massive beast he was taking a bath in a mud puddle. Patrick kept creeping closer and closer. We ended up so close you could have reached out and touched him. He was busy spraying mud and water all over him and did not pay us much attention. We were so close the mud was flying all over us. Patrick said it was as close as he had ever been to a large bull elephant. It was fascinating being that close to one of the largest mammals in the world. As we continued on we came across another incredible scene, a large male leopard eating an antelope just above us crouched in a tree.

Next it was a family of elephants grazing with two babies. The babies were very curious about four Americans in a Land Rover and would come right up to the vehicle. I guess they had never seen Southerners before. One came so close, when it stuck out its trunk Patrick grabed him. The startled baby took a couple of steps back and decided he was no longer impressed with our group.

As we were coming back to camp they radioed Patrick and told him that the wild dogs had just killed an impala right in our camp. We raced along dirt roads and into the camp to find all 17 dogs eating their evening meal about 30 yards from the front door of our room.

Wild dogs are one of the few species that share a kill with their young before the adults eat. It was a flurry of activity as the dogs consumed the impala in a matter of minutes. As we took our shower outside we could still hear the dogs whining and yelping as the meal was finished. Wow!

Our last game drive we found one the male leopard's children, a young female leopard eating an impala while mama looked on. A hyena wandered by the bottom of the tree and the young leopard decided it was time to take its meal up to a higher limb. It was quite a sight to see the cat grab the carcass in her jaws and move up the tree. She did not do a great job draping the kill and it fell out of the tree, prompting the leopard to jump down, grab its kill again and ascended the tree in a matter of seconds.

The really cool part of a private game camp is how close you get to the animals. We have been within feet of lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, cape buffalo, and wild dogs. All of these could have attacked maimed and eaten us with ease but you are instructed to remain still and not to make loud noises or quick movements so the animals look at the Land Rover as a large unit and not a bunch of human meals.

Leaving Kings Camp we headed out with our route planned through the mountains, the escarpement and the Blyde River Canyon (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blyde_River_Canyon). The scenery was beautiful as we winded through shear cliffs and the third largest canyon in the world. One of the lookout points called the Three Rondavels was just breathtaking. We stopped at Gods Window and the small gold town of Graskopf and back to Paul’s house where Sue had a wonderful meat pie waiting for us.