Daily Archive for March 13th, 2007

Elephants march on: Video

Mandlovu and her herd continue to evade me.
But I was lucky to find the other breeding herds. Judging from the numbers this was probably all the elephant on Malilangwe except for Mandlovu and her herd.

Hairy eyeball
This big herd were way way down in the south and I spent most of the day with them. There is good grass cover down there and that was about all they were eating. And eating they were. Like machines they just keep shoving it in stocking up for the coming dry months, but also because they have such an inefficient digestive system.
The herds were as usual amazingly relaxed with my presence.
This big bull was the first dude I found and being in musth he challenged me, but it was no more than a big show.

Watch out!
Then the elephant cow with one tusk, walked past my car, stopped and came back. She walked right up to the front and proceeded to push on the bull-bar. Then left just as casually as she had arrived. She did this 3 times over the course of the day. Who knows why. And never did she show any sign of aggression.
An adult bull also came to give me a shove and moved on.
Maybe I have that look on my face that says I like being pushed around.

Bulls swimming
Then once the herd decided to get moving they moved and walked for over an hour to get to Chiloveka dam where the play began. The whole herd went swimming in their own little groups.

Fly by

The light was lovely and was just the most awesome finish to a really hot day, even though I wasn’t able to swim. Just watching them swimming, as if in slow motion, is actually very therapeutic . For nearly 2hours they swam, and for all that time I was filming and taking photographs. (with a fly stuck in my ear)

Swimming at Chiloveka
At dawn I spent time with the wild dogs hunting on Banyini, my dream location for the dogs to hunt on. But at this time of year it’s worthless as you’re lucky to even see the dogs ears above the tall grass.
They killed an impala, but as usual I only got there after the fact with other pack members.
On the hunt I was with BB when she took off after some impala. She kept on a track for quite some time which meant I could keep up with her and incredibly I clocked her at 55km/hr, even with her limp! When she took off across country I lost her and a while later she came back empty handed.

Buffalo herd

Mabhakweni No.16

bushmanlogo.jpg

Mabhakweni 11A

This pregnant is floating as if in space. Or maybe it’s a really well fed man as they used to gorge themselves when a big animal was killed.

And that strange drawing to the right seems to be a part of this same drawing but it sure doesn’t resemble anything in my book.

Mabhakweni 16

Tjololo 12th March 2000

The Tjololo Diaries

12th March 2000
That did it! While sleeping around midday the heavens let rip and in about half an hour we had close on 30mm rain. Then it settled down to a gentle drizzle with over 40mm falling by sunset. So we’re back to the situation of about 10 days ago as far as road condition and off road driving go. Just when we thought we’d escaped it all we got drowned and now the river is rising substantially but this is unlikely to be a major flood.


Now we just pray for hot dry weather. But for last night with the continuing rain and now flooded roads, it was pointless us even trying to go out on the prowl.
These rains have been continuing to fall in Mozambique where it is now reported some 2 million people are homeless. We can count our blessings.