ROAR 3


Reflections after Day 2 at Camp 2: Tintswalo

May 7, 2011: Rhinos & other Creatures

We arrived before lunch yesterday at Tintswalo and exchanged hugs and kisses with the group of 8 who were switching homes with us. We absolutely loved Leopard Hills and were ever so sad to depart this camp which had become our home. The rooms, while nice, were not the largest nor the most luxurious we have experienced, the lodge and library were separated and the property itself small compared to others. The service, food and rangers were among the best we have ever had. The layout lent itself to our using the common areas and staying long periods of time after breakfast and lunch chatting with one another. We are a very cohesive group and there is no drama, save for a tic or spider bite which Dr. Ken quickly cures. We quickly fell into a jeep pattern and really bonded with our terrific rangers, Dave and Gary. These two fellows are so, so knowledgeable about the flora and fauna, we have learned a tremendous amount from them.

In addition to our group, there were two other guests, a German couple who had their own jeep. We soon became friendly and learned he worked for BMW and had been transferred to Pretoria, South Africa for 5 years. They shared stories of their lives as expatriates with us....tales of living as prisoners in a luxury compound due to Johannesburg's high crime rate and days without water or electricity due to infrastructure problems. Glamorous South Africa seemed less so after a few drinks.

Cougar

They were replaced on our last night by a different guest...the Couger from Phoenix or Cp as I will refer to her here. Cp did not come off well initially with me. As I sat in the library on the computer, she stood over me demanding I get off for her. I told her to "move along " as I had just sat down and would be awhile. She turned on her gladiator sandals, straightened her silk pashmina and shook her dangly earrings and proceeded to march up to the dining area where she joined Guy, Jacob, Sheila and Ken for lunch. By the end of lunch, our quartet beat a speedy retreat from this freeloader's pushy and haughty Ugly American behavior. She shared that she was a travel agent who would never travel with her "high wealth" clients as our travel agent does. Cp spent the lunch hour interrogating our friends and making snide remarks about Regent, the rangers' personal lives, etc. For the 4pm game drive she plopped herself in the jeep with Jacob, Guy, Susan, Paul, Cindy and David and by dinner time she had done anything but ingratiate herself to our group. When we asked her where in Phoenix she lived, she responded, "In a conservative community with big houses near John Mc Cain." An odd response to say the least.

She was a well preserved mid 60ish Couger and proceeded to try to pick up most of the men in the group. She started with 80 year old Jacob, but he really didn't understand the gibberish coming from her- English not being his fluent language (Swiss German was)- and ended up hitting on poor Dave, our early 30ish ranger.
We wondered what type of clients would ever want to interact with this obnoxious species of American human and hoped that the future would lead to extinction of this breed. We wished we had the foresight to have said, "it would be so lovely if you were somewhere else."

Rhino

Sadly, while the Cp species seems to flourish, the prehistoric looking rhino is fast becoming an endangered species. While supposedly quite dangerous, the white rhinos we encountered seem ever so gentle and unthreatening. They rarely seem to acknowledge our presence and continue their focus on eating and carrying on munching on grass. Sometimes these shy and clueless souls will hide behind whatever they can. As you can see from this picture, this hapless beast has no idea that he is too large to hide from us. It was kind of "I can't see you so you can't see me."

Poaching of rhinos is fast becoming a serious issue. Before the poaching situation began a few years ago, the white rhino population was growing at a rate of 3-6%. Poached for their horns, during 2010, 333 rhinos lost their lives to poachers up from 47 in 2008. Despite emergency summits by the parks and government and public outcry, their slaughter continues. The horns bring $1 million dollars on the black market and greed is fostering their demise. Specialized anti poaching units, assisted by the military have been set up. Traditional Chinese Medicine subscribes that the horn is a viable Viagra alternative. China, far from debunking this myth, is funding studies and proposals that advocate the breeding of endangered medicinal animals. The other primary use of horns are dagger handles for Yemini men. Some estimates have put the retail price of rhino horn as high as $60,000 per kilogram, which makes a mockery of some of the SA fines. SA's 9 provinces carry different penalties which impose impose a max penalty of a 10 years prison term and/or a $1.4mm fine. What is most daunting is that poaching syndicates have upped the stakes by using high powered weapons, sophisticated GPS and night vision technology. Companies like Woolworths and it's customers are responding with programs to fund anti poaching by supporting the purchase of binoculars, radios, night vision gear and bullet proof armor as well as rhino tracking and camping equipment.
The bottom line is the need for funding of a long term sustainable educational campaign that debunks the belief that rhino horn has medicinal properties.

Elephants

Watching the elephants has proven to be a fascinating experience for us. They are possibly the most frightening of the animals we have seen. A bull elephant in musk is downright mean and females protecting their young can prove quite fearsome.

We had our own encounter with a female elephant. You'll see Sheila's shock above as the elephant appeared to be getting a little too close for comfort. Elephants walking through an area leave a path of destruction, knocking down huge trees, leaving huge dung heaps everywhere, eating the bark off trees and destroying them. However, they also display contradictory selectivity, judiciously picking only certain plants and roots from the bush.

This herbaceous diet leads to an interesting dung. According to our rangers, since the elephant eats a mixture of plants and does not digest about 70-80% of the food they consume, the dung supposedly holds a multitude of benefits ranging from mulch, insect repellent when burned, headache relief, a digestive to a dingo doobie. Our tracker even ate an entire batch of it during our drive today. Yum.

Can't you just see a market for this? We thought EleCure would be a great name! Just imagine the marketing....

Lions

These are certainly beautiful cats; so cuddly and sweet looking that it is hard to believe that they are killers.

One look at their massive size and teeth and one listen to their mighty roar certainly returns you to reality.

We have been tracking a coalition of 6 males and a female who moved in for a 4 day quickie. One good looking blonde male, Brad Pitt, seems to be her chosen man. However, we have only observed one mating. There has been a lot of flirting by the female and some futile attempts by the male-one which resulted in a bite from the female. Sometimes no just means no. Each sex act takes about a minute and usually reoccurs every 15 minutes for 4 days. This male lion just didn't seem to tickle her fancy, no matter how much eau de dung he rolled in.

Even a meal coming down the road is not enough to excite a lion to attack. We watched while a water buffalo came face to face with the female lion, resulting in a stand off. Each stared one another down, then looked away as though not knowing what to do. Then, the male lion came into the scene and the water buffalo turned and retreated. Nevertheless, the lions just stood and watched and didn't follow. Sex was the only thing on their minds.


The mighty lions also had a haughty way of just plopping themselves wherever. All of a sudden, our lion would just decide to stop (the usual) and take a cat nap at a moment's notice.
We found ourselves stranded behind them time and time again. However, our tracker seemed to possess special powers and was able to redirect them, with just a strong hand motion. We began calling our tracker, Foster, the lion whisperer.
Monkeys, Baboons and the Presidential Suite
We had an interesting time watching the vervet monkeys outside our room at Tintswalo. The monkeys appear all over the resort. It is the baboons who are the most concerning. We were warned to ensure we lock our doors as they have already destroyed our suite twice. We are sharing the presidential suite with Ken and Sheila and this suite has two suites (identical to the rest of the suites) and a large shared living room and kitchen.

Today, we were out using the deck area. Doug, Ken and Sheila went to lunch and I stayed behind to rest. It hadn't been 5 minutes or so since they all left and I had begun to doze off. All of a sudden I heard a loud banging. Thinking someone was locked out, I jumped up and opened our suite door to see the living room door being pushed ajar by a monkey. Behind him were some buddies. Seeing me, they dashed off, thank goodness. At first I thought it might just be a malerone dream, but I walked over to the door and there was a giant poop right outside. It was either a calling card or my showing up shared them shitless.

We determined that, due to the size of the dung, it had to be a group of the pesky baboons. These little burglars must have been casing the joint!

Our lovely suite and the scene of the crime had a few issues: no hot water, rattling pipes (both caused by broken "geezers") and a leaky pipe in our wall in the bedroom. We also had an issue with missing laundry which the lodge replaced. These things happen, but it was not the running operation of some other camps.
As pretty as the lodge and rooms were, this resort did not hold a torch (even though they tried) to Leopard Hills in terms of maintenance, service, food, ranger quality or game drives. Leopard Hills will be added to our list of favorites along with Singita and Lion Sands.


Leopards

Usually leopards are illusive and solitary cats but we found Leopard Hills lived up to it's name. We began our first day with mating leopards then moved on to female leopard rejection by the new alpha male. Try as SHE might, this guy wasn't interested.

A new leopard moved into the 'hood and we followed him about while he checked out a new territory.

Hippo

We soon learned that hippos pooping sounds like a machine gun going off! Overall, we saw the usual hippos in the water but were lucky enough to catch a land view as well.

Wild dog

Yes, we finally saw them! First,we saw a pack of 6 out hunting and then the alpha female, who promptly left a present for us. It's been a trip of poo and Wild dog poo stinks! Then, on our last day, we had an exciting race chasing the dogs. I think the jeep excursions with Gary at Leopard Hills was as much fun as seeing the game!

Our rangers

I can't say enough great things about our rangers at both camps. Dave and Gary (LH) were full of knowledge and wild jeep rides. Our rangers Eric and Jamie (Tint) form a team with their trackers and have provided tremendous comic relief. We have had a baptism, joke telling, song and dance numbers and today a bush breakfast replete with entertainment provided by our ranger/tracker team. The game was a bit more exciting at LH but I think we have made up for the lack of game with so much laughter that no one seems to mind.

The Gigglers and Geeks

We have labled the men a Geekload of Guys and the women a Giggle of Girls. Today, we separated into male and female jeeps and went off on a race to see which sex would find more species. The Geeks favorite discussion centers around ISOs and apertures. They continuously stop to take pictures of blades of grass "with the right amount of gold" and birds in various stages of flight. "Don't rock the jeep" and "one more picture" are the frequent critter calls from the Geeks. The Gigglers favorite conversation centers around tales of the Cougar and comparing the Geeks. We never stop to take a photo of birds or insects, but only deem to stop for kills, leopards in trees and the rear ends of cheetahs (inside joke).

Doug and I lost much of our underwear after we sent it out to be washed. We were informed that the monkeys or baboons have probably retrieved it when the maid dropped it. So, we are all in search of baboons with a leopard bra, men's jockey shorts and white ankle socks. Of course, the lodge replaced Doug's finery with a stunning pair of blue polyester boxer shorts with no fly fronts. He should be modeling for us later.

Bush breakfasts and Bomas

I love the bush breakfasts which are lovely formal breakfasts out in the bush (duh). The BOMAs have been fun as well, being outdoor barbeques full of laughter and song.

The weather has been delightful and pics will be sent along soon. The internet connection has been very slow, so pics had to be separated from the story!