Friday, December 14, 2007
Our Last Game Drive and Cape St Francis (Nov 5th)
It was another early rise today at 6am for our final game drive. It was a beautiful sunny day with blue sky - a nice way to round off our stay at Amakhala.
We had a different ranger today a South African guy called Andre, as our previous ranger Matt was on holiday for a week. Our final drive was very enjoyable, but I think 2 days and 4 game drives is just about right as it allowed us to see most of the animals.
Here's a photo of a mother and baby rhino. We were lucky enough to see them on nearly all of our drives.
Click Here to enlarge Photo
On our last game drive we saw lots of giraffes and zebras again - there are over 200 zebras on the reserve.
Click Here to enlarge Photo
We also saw the elephants (in the distance amongst the trees again!), Rhino, a huge Tortoise, Springbok, Impala, Blesbok, Kudo and the rare Africa Fish Eagle.
Click Here to enlarge Photo
We left Amakhala for our next destination - a brief stop in a place called Cape St Francis before continuing along the garden route. I have really enjoyed our stay at Amakhala - nice accommodation, fantastic game drives and rangers, excellent food and really welcoming staff who were friendly and made an effort to remember everyone's first name.
The drive to Cape St Francis was pleasant apart from a brief detour where we ended up on an unpaved road for miles and had visions of breaking down in the middle of nowhere.
We arrived in Cape St Francis in the early afternoon at our guesthouse Lyngenfjord. Since the weather was pretty horrible - very windy and a bit chilly, we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon relaxing and catching up on our sleep after those 6am starts. Our room was nice with great views over the beach, but a little bit old fashioned for our liking and the bed had the dreaded blankets on it, which do nothing for me apart from make me sneeze. We weren't really tempted to go for a walk on the beach as it was so wild and windy, so I didn't feel too bad about sleeping in the afternoon.
If I had to choose again I probably wouldn't have bothered coming here - I would have tried a little harder to get accommodation further along the garden route instead.
Going out for dinner was a difficult experience. The owner of the guesthouse was nowhere to be found so we couldn't get any advice on where to go for dinner. We drove around Cape St Francis and St Francis bay and found that almost every single restaurant was closed. The whole place was a bit eery, like a ghost town. St Francis Bay itself was a pleasant enough place with nice houses and a nice little waterfront area but there was just no atmosphere and no people around. Eventually we found a steakhouse and had a big meaty dinner before collapsing in our bed very early, still tired after all those early starts!
We found out the next day that Monday is the most common day in this area for restuarants to close. Never mind!
You can read more about
St Francis Bay here.
Labels: Eastern Cape, Safari
Monday, December 10, 2007
Our Second Day on Safari at Amakhala (Nov 4th)
I am glad we are only here for two days - this place is a recipe for getting fat! Muffins and coffee/tea at 6.30am, biscuits and coffee on our game drive, breakfast at 10am with fruit, cereal, yoghurt. toast, eggs, bacon, beans and mushrooms, a cooked lunch at 2pm, wine/beer/soft drinks and snacks on the afternoon game drive, followed by a three course dinner with wine, then coffee, tea and cheese and biscuits. Phew! It's almost like being on a cruise. I did want to overindulge a little after that pre-wedding diet, but this is taking things to another extreme :-)
We were woken up again today at 6am for pour first game drive of the day and luckily it stayed dry this time.
Here's a photo of Matt our ranger beside a huge termite mound! There were loads of these things around the game reserve:
Click Here to enlarge PhotoOn this drive we concentrated on finding elephants since we were unsuccessful the last time (who would have thought that finding a herd of 15 elephants would be so difficult!
After driving around for a while our eagle eyed ranger Matt spotted them up on a hill, in amongst the trees, but we didn't get a great view of them as they were hard to see clearly without binoculars. It sounds a bit strange to think that it would be hard to spot 15 elephants, but Amakhala is pretty big and the elephants take on the colour of the ground that they roll in.
It would have been great to see all of these elephants close up, but unfortunately it was not to be! Towards the end of the game drive we were lucky enough to see the male bull elephant wandering around on his own:
Click Here to enlarge Photo We didn't spend the whole time looking for big animals - there were also a few smaller ones too. Here is a leopard tortoise, one of the "little five". The big five are Lion, Buffalo, Leopard, Elephant, Rhino and the little five are the ant lion, buffalo weaver, lepard tortoise, rhinoceros beetle and elephant shrew!
Click Here to enlarge Photo
After the game drive it was back to Amakhala for breakfast and we spent the rest of the morning relaxing and having a bit of a snooze!
After lunch we went on our afternoon game drive and this time concentrated on finding the Lions. The lions are in a separate part of the reserve at the moment and to get there you go through a tunnel (under the road) and over some electric wires. The lions were being too opportunistic and killing young animals rather than spending energy trying to kill the adult animals, so the decision was made to keep them in a separate part of the reserve until the numbers had been built up sufficiently. The plan was to introduce them back to the main reserve this year, but they had cubs, so they are being kept separately for a while longer.
With the help of some of the other rangers (who all speak to each other on the walkie talkies in a strange code language) we found the lions, sleeping under a group of trees.
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It was amazing seeing the lions and the female seemed to just stare at us. Aparantly all the animals, including the lions just see the safari vehicle as one big smelly animal, unless people start jumping about or standing up, so we made sure that we stayed perfectly still.
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We finished off our game drive with another successful sighting - this time some buffalo. We also saw a few wildebeest:
Click Here to enlarge Photo
Labels: Eastern Cape, Safari
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Review of Leeuwenbosch, Amakhala - Eastern Cape Private Game Reserve
Here's a quick review and some photos of Leeuwenbosch, which is in the
Amakhala Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
We stayed in Shearer's Lodge, which is a former sheep shearing building and an alternative to staying in the main house at Leeuwenbosch. Our room was very spacious with a large bedroom area and a living room area with chairs, a table and a sofa.
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The bathroom was pretty big with a nice bathtub and a separate walk in shower.
Check in time is 2pm, but we arrived early around 11am and they were happy for us to sit on the verandah with a drink and our room was clean and ready for us before 2pm.
We picked the all inclusive option which includes all your food (and lots of it), drinks (including wine, beer and spirits) and two game activities per day. Current rates in the high season are R2180 a night per person, but check the website for the latest prices.
Food is in a very nice communal dining room and includes cereals, fruit, yoghurt, juice and a cooked breakfast at 10am, a cooked lunch (e.g. rice and a hot dish) at 2pm, then a three course dinner followed by cheese and tea and coffee at around 8pm. There are also snacks and drinks on all the game drives. Both of us enjoyed all the food, especially dinner. Here's a piccie of me outside the building where the dining room is.
The grounds in Leeuwenbosch are very pleasant - lots of nicely manicured lawns and flowers. It's very peaceful and there is a small swimming pool with sun loungers:
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The staff at Leeuwenbosch are great - very friendly and welcoming and excellent highly knowledgeable rangers for our game drives. I would definitely recommend this place to a friend.
Labels: Accommodation Reviews, Eastern Cape, Safari
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Safari at Amakhala (Nov 3rd)
Today we got up at the horrendous hour of 5.30am for our 8.10am flight from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. We had decided when planning the honeymoon that driving all the way to Port Elizabeth and back again would be too much for a 2 week holiday so we are flying one way, then hiring a car and driving back to Cape Town.
Our flight was with South African airways and took around 55 minutes to get to Port Elizabeth. We picked up our hire car from Sixt and Stuart was disappointed to find that it was an automatic car as he likes to whizz round corners, changing gear as he goes.
We drove the sixty something kilometres to Amakhala private game reserve (just across the road from Shamwari game reserve) to Leeuenbosch where we are staying for the next 2 nights. At the time of booking the rate was R2180 per person, per trip - the most expensive part of our honeymoon by far, but the rate includes all meals, drinks and two game drives per day.
Checkin time was 2pm, but we arrived at 11am and received a warm welcome and after signing a disclaimer which basically said that we wouldn't sue Amakhala if we were injured or maimed by wild animals, we had a relaxing drink on the verandah and enjoyed the view:
While at Amakhala our itinerary will be as follows:
- 6am - Wakeup call
- 6.30am - Coffee then set of on our first game drive
- 10am - Breakfast
- 2pm - Lunch
- 3pm - Second game drive
- 6.30pm - return from game drive
- 7.30pm - Bar opens
- 8pm - Dinner
Sounds like a busy day, but at least we will have a few hours after our morning drive to relax after the hustle and bustle of Cape Town.
We spent an hour or so lazing by the pool reading, then had lunch and set off on our first game drive:
The weather started off lovely with blue sky and sunshine and almost straight away we saw some zebra and giraffes.
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It was amazing to see the giraffes so close to us!
Click Here to enlarge Photo
After a while it became extremely cold and we were glad for our extra layers of clothing and the rugs and ponchos in the truck. Our ranger Matt, from Arizona was excellent and very knowledgeable about the animals and the plants. We saw lots of zebra, giraffes, springbok, rhino, wildebeest, ostrich, as well as many different kinds of birds and some insects including scorpions and spiders.
Click Here to enlarge Photo
The drive was very enjoyable apart from the last hour where it absolutely pissed down with rain and I was very glad for the unsexy ponchos at that point.
In the evening we had drinks in the bar with "Uncle Bill" and "Aunt Rose", the owners of Leeuwenbosch. Uncle Bill is certainly quite a character with lots of stories to tell.
We had Ostrich for our main course at dinner, which I had never tried before and it was actally very tasty. I expected it to taste like chicken, but it was more like a very tender beef.
After dinner we had a couple of G&Ts in the bar while listening to stories from Uncle Bill, then it was in bed by 11pm in preparation for our 6am start tomorrow - so much for a relaxing honeymoon!
Labels: Eastern Cape, Safari
