A Journal, with Pictures

My three sis­ters from Ore­gon came to South Car­oli­na at the end of Octo­ber for a short vis­it. We did a lot of tour­ing includ­ing Hilton Head Island, Savan­nah, the cot­tage at Chechessee Creek, Spring Island, Beau­fort and Bluffton. The Pra­do fam­i­ly joined us while we were at the Chechessee Creek cot­tage and treat­ed our vis­i­tors to a boat tour of the riv­er and marsh­land sur­round­ing Spring Island. We did a trol­ly tour of Savan­nah includ­ing a tour of the Mer­cer House famous from the book and movie, Mid­night in the land of good and evil. They also toured Beau­fort by car­riage as well as dip­ping their toes in the Atlantic ocean ” I can’t believe the water is so warm”.  We also did a lot of eat­ing of local dish­es and even saw a Man­a­tee at the dock where we had lunch on Hilton Head Island. What fol­lows are some pic­tures from the visit:

Hilton Head Island Touring

Tour­ing Savannah

Tour­ing Beaufort

Chechessee Creek, Spring Island

Bluffton and Hilton Head Island

The weath­er was per­fect and we caught up on fam­i­ly hap­pen­ings and were re-intro­duced to the Low Coun­try of South Car­oli­na. We thor­ough­ly enjoyed the com­pa­ny and vowed to get togeth­er soon and hope­ful­ly include more of the family.

We depart­ed our home air­ports on Sun­day, July 14, met in Atlanta where we board­ed our fif­teen and half hour flight to Johan­nes­burg, South Africa. We were met after clear­ing cus­toms by the Aber­crom­bie & Kent rep­re­sen­ta­tive and escort­ed across the street to the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel where we would spend the night. The next morn­ing after break­fast, we were escort­ed to our char­tered flight to Botswana, with a stop to clear cus­toms in Maun, then on to our des­ti­na­tion, Sanc­tu­ary Chief’s Camp.

We arrived at the camp and were met by the staff singing a native wel­come song. We dropped our bags in our room, had lunch on the deck, and we are off on our first game drive.

Every­one was excit­ed about our first dri­ve and we saw lots of inter­est­ing ani­mals, but there was antic­i­pa­tion to see some of the big cats and oth­er big animals.

That evening we set­tled in and then were treat­ed to a show put on by the local tribe mem­bers on the staff. Cock­tails and din­ner are excel­lent and we were off to a great start on our adventure.

Sanc­tu­ary Chief’s Camp is sit­u­at­ed on the pri­vate Mom­bo Con­ces­sion with­in the More­mi Game Reserve, at the core of the Oka­van­go Delta. The area is a mix of mature wood­lands, the biggest island being Cheif’s island on which the camp is built and ver­dant flood plains that become inun­dat­ed from as ear­ly as April every year. The camp gets its name from the deceased Chief More­mi III’s wife under whose lead­er­ship in 1963 estab­lished the More­mi game reserve. It is the only offi­cial­ly pro­tect­ed area of the Oka­van­go Delta and has result­ed in an amaz­ing con­cen­tra­tion of diverse Africa species. The Sanc­tu­ary Retreats orga­ni­za­tion owns and man­ages a num­ber of high-end camps and lodges in five African countries.

The camp itself is made up of the main lodge with lux­u­ry Pavil­lion Rooms on either side of the lodge fac­ing a dried lake bed with a water­ing hole in front of a deck. Dur­ing the rainy sea­son, the lake is full, dur­ing the dry sea­son it hosts a parade of all kinds of ani­mals com­ing to drink or wallow.

We had five Pavil­lion Rooms that includ­ed a bed­room, sit­ting room, ful­ly stocked bar, deck, pool, dress­ing room and bath­room with an indoor as well as an out­door show­er. Recent­ly refur­bished every­thing was mod­ern, except the roof was thatched (wood ceil­ings in rooms). When the ear­ly morn­ing wake-up calls (knock on the door) start the baboons would jump from roof to roof mak­ing a huge racket.

The rou­tine at Chief’s camp was a six A.M. wake up call, break­fast buf­fet with served entres to order, morn­ing game dri­ve leav­ing at sev­en A.M. with a cof­fee break in the bush mid-morn­ing then return to the camp for a sit down served lunch from the menu. The after­noon game dri­ve left at three P.M. with cock­tails served in the bush around sun­down and the return to the lodge for more cock­tails and din­ner served from the menu. The food, wine, cock­tails, ser­vices were first class and the staff was extreme­ly friend­ly and well trained includ­ing the two dri­vers, track­er, guides assigned to our group.

 

Our first full day at Chiefs Camp starts off with an African sun­rise then an incred­i­ble leop­ard pho­to op. A male and female, thought to be broth­er and sis­ter were fin­ish­ing off their impala kill. The male was eat­ing but the female was pos­ing and what a job she did.

We then get treat­ed to an Ele­phant show, first at the water­ing hole while hav­ing lunch in camp, then lat­er out in the bush.

We enjoy view­ing a num­ber of addi­tion­al species in addi­tion to the ele­phants in the after­noon. includ­ing a Baboon perched on top of a ter­mite mound to scan for predators.

 

 

 

Thurs­day was our last full day at Chief’s camp and it turned out to be a full one which includes, a Hye­na fam­i­ly and Rhi­no pho­to op in the morn­ing along with some oth­er inter­est­ing species.

When it was time to return to camp for lunch we had a sur­prise. The chef and staff had set up a stir fry to order lunch, of course with a bar, in the bush.

Tomor­row we will fly on to Singita.

Joyce and I decide to have a leisure­ly morn­ing as every­one else decides to take one last game dri­ve on the way to the airstrip for our flight in the same King Air that brought us. It’s cool and we have break­fast with our fam­i­ly then see them off. We say our good­byes to the won­der­ful Chiefs Camp staff, then are dri­ven to the airstrip for our flight. It’s a short flight to Maun to clear cus­toms out of Botswana, but this time they decide to do it the hard way and it takes us an hour and a half because they inspect every bag. We con­tin­ue the hour and forty-five-minute flight land­ing at San­gi­ta lodge where we are met by our guides and track­ers. Our Host­ess wel­comes us to our com­pound, our chef has pre­pared lunch and we still leave for the after­noon game dri­ve at three-thir­ty. We come upon a small heard of Rhi­nos wal­low­ing in a water hole with both Black and White species, which is an impres­sive start. We then view some ele­phants and start to get the lay of the Sin­gi­ta land.

The first evening we join the oth­er lodge guests at the main lodge for a bar­beque. We are intro­duced to the excel­lent Sin­gi­ta wine col­lec­tion, and a won­der­ful meal cooked over the fire. We are then enter­tained by the local tribe who per­form a tra­di­tion­al dance, that includes par­tic­i­pa­tion by some of our fam­i­ly. It was a very aus­pi­cious start to our stay at Singita.

 

Sin­gi­ta Ebony Lodge is the orig­i­nal loca­tion in the 19 lodge San­gi­ta col­lec­tion of top-end lux­u­ry “camps.” The pri­vate prop­er­ty is set with­in the 160,500-acre Sabi Sands Game Reserve adja­cent to Kruger Nation­al Park in north­east­ern South Africa. San­gi­ta Ebony Lodge sits on a bluff over­look­ing the Sands Riv­er, where we had a two-fam­i­ly suite (four bed­rooms) plus com­mon area and a sep­a­rate suite for Joyce and me. Our sep­a­rate com­pound had its own Host­ess, Chef, serv­ing staff and we had two track­ers and two guides assigned to look after us. The main lodge was a five-minute walk away.  Our rou­tine was to rise at six A.M. have a light break­fast and leave on the game dri­ve at sev­en. We would stop around nine A.M. for cof­fee, cocoa or tea, and a bis­cuit, then con­tin­ue our morn­ing game dri­ve. We then would have a large breakfast/brunch around eleven and then relax or par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties until three P.M. We then would leave for the after­noon game dri­ve, stop for a glass of wine or cock­tail before return­ing to our lodge, where we would have a gourmet din­ner pre­pared by our chef after cock­tails. Sin­gi­ta is one of the biggest buy­ers of pre­mi­um wines in South African and they served out­stand­ing wines at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Our Track­ers and Guides were superb and became part of the fam­i­ly quickly.

The word was that a lion pride had killed a Cape Buf­fa­lo next to Kruger Game Reserve, so we head­ed there first thing in the morn­ing. We were not dis­ap­point­ed. The pride was still feed­ing on the sec­ond day with the dom­i­nate male doing the eat­ing with two cubs and the moth­er and oth­er females still there.

We crossed the riv­er each day on our game dri­ve and saw the more aquat­ic species at the crossing.

The after­noon dri­ve serves up a big vari­ety of species.

A great day of game view­ing and enjoy­ing San­gi­ta incred­i­ble ameni­ties and hospitality.

Sun­day turned out to be a leop­ard high­light day. In the morn­ing our amaz­ing track­er Vusi spot­ted a lone leop­ard in a dense bush, it then decid­ed to pose for us. In the after­noon we fol­lowed a male as he walked along the river­bank near our camp. In the evening, again our track­er spot­ted a female near our camp who had killed an ante­lope and had hye­nas steal the kill. When we came upon the scene the hye­nas were fight­ing over the kill, and we pro­vid­ed enough dis­trac­tion for the leop­ard to steal back part of the kill. With a few more inter­est­ing ani­mals to pho­to­graph it was quite a day.

Tomor­row will be our last day and as usu­al, Our Sin­gi­ta Host, Chef and Staff pre­pare a great din­ner, with great wine to cel­e­brate a great trip.

We were nine­ty per­cent packed and had our nor­mal six A.M. wake up call and sev­en A.M. depar­ture for our last game dri­ve. One of the nat­u­ral­ists had spot­ted a lone male lion so that was our chal­lenge for the morn­ing. Vusi our track­er picked up the tracks on a road and start­ed track­ing on foot in the bush and we cir­cled to try to inter­cept our quar­ry. We soon spot­ted a mag­nif­i­cent young male trav­el­ing fast. The ear­ly morn­ing sun was low and behind the lion but we still man­aged to cap­ture some halfway decent images of this mag­nif­i­cent creature.

As we head­ed back to camp we stopped to pho­to­graph two Zebra who turned to say good­bye as we leave this incred­i­ble place. We enjoyed one last Sin­gi­ta lunch, then fin­ished pack­ing and head­ed for the airstrip. Our flight was a lit­tle over an hour and we checked back into the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal where we had a day room. Lunch, show­er and relax until our eight P.M. fif­teen-hour flight to Atlanta. We cleared cus­toms and then caught our last flight to our home air­ports. We all arrived home before noon on Tues­day, July 23. Enjoy­ing two fab­u­lous loca­tions, unbe­liev­able hos­pi­tal­i­ty and unfor­get­table safari expe­ri­ence with our fam­i­ly is a trip of a life­time. We will be shar­ing mem­o­ries for months and years to come.