Madikwe

On Sunday we were meant to go to South Africa, but, about twenty mins from the border, Wethu realised she’d forgotten her passport! By the time we got back to Gabs we weren’t going to make it to the border again before it closed, so we gave up for the night. Instead we got up at 6.30am in the morning, and were out of the house by 7.30. We were going to Madikwe, a game reserve about 750km sq, where one of Wethu’s friends works as a chef in a lodge, and had invited us to come stay with her. After a slight detour of about 45mins on a dirt road in a tiny car in the wrong direction, we got there. Since we were using the staff entrance someone had been waiting to open the gate for us for over an hour, but he didn’t seem pissed off at all!
Nes is absolutely lovely, and the lodge was wonderful. We were all sleeping in Nes’ room and one of the perks of the job is your friends can come visit and join in on any game drives for free, so it was all free! Incredible! Especially as it’s meant to cost £500 a night to stay there (that’s with proper posh food, accommodation and two three and a half hour game drives included, but still!). After Nes had made us the most delicious toasted sandwich I have ever had and we’d installed ourselves in her room, we joined four other British tourists for a game drive. It was incredible, we saw loads (as in about a dozen) juvenile lions right up close, they didn’t seem bothered by us at all. Wethu dropped her camera off the side near the beginning but luckily we found it again when we drove back the same way – it was just lying in the road! We also stopped for ‘sundowners’, just stopped in the bush and the guy set up a little table, put a table cloth on it, arranged various snacks and we all had a drink. It was quite ridiculous but great. Plus we saw rhino, giraffe, impala, warthog, water buck, a chameleon that the guide picked up to show us, and, most terribly excitingly A LEOPARD!  Seeing a leopard is like winning the lottery of game drives, they are really shy and nocturnal, so you barely ever see them. Our guide in Mokolodi had worked there for 5 years and had not seen one yet. And not only that, but this one was really calm and just walked slowly away rather than running away, meaning we got to get a really good look at it (although unfortunately no pictures – by ‘a really good look’ I mean under a minute, not half an hour or anything).
When we got back we were very excited by all that, and went to join Nes at her house for a braai (barbequeue), which was delicious. Then we sat outside and talked until about 11pm with a lot of the staff from the lodge, including our guide from the drive. It was really nice, and, even though we weren’t staying in a four or five start lodge, even though the four of us were cramped in nes’ one room, it was so much better than just staying there as a tourist would have been.
We got up at 5.00am to get ready for another game drive (difficult but so worth it). It was the same people on the drive as the day before which was nice as we’d built up a bit of a rapport. Instead of sundowners we had the African version of Irish coffee with rusks, and we saw more lions (with the cutest little cubs in the world), bat-eared foxes, and a wild dog. The wild dog was really cool actually, it had been separated from its pack (probably during a hunt) and was trying to find them again. So it would run along for a bit along the road, then stop, look around, and make this very plaintiff loud squeal with its head facing downwards so the sound echoed farther, then stop to listen, then go off again. We followed it a fair way before it disappeared into the bush and we couldn’t follow. We also saw loads of other animals but I feel a blow by blow account is unnecessary. Then, after lunch and a chilled afternoon watching tv in Nes’ room, we went home. I am so incredibly grateful to Nes for giving us this opportunity and being so amazingly nice to us, we would not have been able to afford something like this otherwise, and it was totally awesome!