Week 6 - iMfolozi Camp

The iMfolozi camp is quite a bit different than the Hluhluwe camp.  It is basically a house with a fence around it in the middle of the bush.  There are 2 rooms for sleeping, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room.  The power is operated by solar panels and is shared with another nearby camp for park staff, which makes us use power at a minimum.  Water is available, but the pipes sometimes get damaged by elephants before it enters our camp area and it can be out for a couple of days before it gets fixed – luckily this didn’t happen while I was here.  There is no washing machine, so I used my clothes sparingly until we visited Hluhluwe again where I was able to do my laundry before going to the next camp site.  It is a much more intimate feel at this camp since the only people around are the other volunteers.  I appreciate this other perspective, but I found myself missing Hluhluwe and the lovely people I got to know.

The girls I am with are all very nice and cheerful.  There are 5 of us ladies: Claire (20, France) – my roommate from weeks 3 and 4, Bettina (25, Austria), Michelle (19, Netherlands), Regina (21, Canada) and myself and Antoine (our monitor).  Kevin (the relief monitor) showed up on Sunday night since Antoine was going on holiday for most of the week.  Both of the monitors are very nice and knowledgeable and made life at camp pretty chillax.

On my first afternoon of arrival to iMfolozi camp, we saw an elephant drinking and 4 lions sleeping on a sandbar in the river.  There are many wild dog packs on this side of the park and tracking them with the telemetry takes a lot of time.  There is also a large wilderness area on this side of the park.  There are no roads in the wilderness area and the dogs seem to like to hide out there where we can’t check on them.  Antoine is a birder, so I’ve been able to stop and see all the little birds and try to get pictures of them.  On Monday morning, we were very lucky to get a wonderful sighting of a large male leopard as it walked down the road for a full 5 minutes – he was beautiful!  Friday was our “Big 5 Day”.  We saw all big 5 (lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, rhino) in one day! – among other critters of course J.  It was a beautiful day with great weather, terrific animal sightings and we finished it off with a braie.  Saturday we went to Hluhluwe to have an afternoon braie with the other volunteers – and also had a chance to get on internet, do laundry and charge all our batteries.  It was great fun to see Cathy and the other Research camp folks again.  Sunday was the best day for me though.  We were cleaning up at camp when Kevin got a radio call that there was a cheetah kill at a nearby bridge.  We dropped what we were doing, got in the vehicle and rushed to the kill site.  When we arrived we saw an adult female cheetah with her adolescent cub feeding on an adult male impala they had just killed.  We didn’t see the chase/kill itself, but watching the 2 of them feed and look out for scavenging vultures, lions and hyenas was really cool J.  They were very close to the road and caused a bit of a traffic jam, but that didn’t seem to affect their behavior and we were able to watch them for 3.5 hours.  Luckily no scavengers showed up while they were eating and they were able to get very full bellies by the time night fell.  This by far is the best sighting I’ve had.

Today I am being transferred to another park, Tembe, and have heard nothing but great stories about the park and the camp site.  Since my time at the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park has come to an end, here is a complete list of critters I’ve seen during my 6 weeks.  If anyone is coming to Africa, I would definitely recommend this park as a good stop in your journey.

Animals: African elephant, African wild dog, banded mongoose, black rhinoceros, black-backed jackal, blue wildebeest, bushbuck, bushpig, Cape buffalo, chacma baboon, cheetah, crocodile, giraffe, grey duiker, hippopotamus, impala, kudu, large-spotted genet, leopard, lion, nyala, plains zebra, red duiker, samango monkey, scrub hare, slender mongoose, spotted hyena, thick-tailed bushbaby, vervet monkey, warthog and white rhinoceros

Birds: black-collared barbet, crested barbet, bateleur, white-fronted bee-eater, southern boubou, dark-capped bulbul, grey-headed bush-shrike, black-bellied bustard, green-backed camaroptera, steepe buzzard, yellow-fronted canary, mocking cliff-chat, white-breasted cormorant, Burchell’s coucal, pied crow, African darter (anhinga), fork-tailed drongo, square-tailed drongo, African crowned eagle, long-crested eagle, martial eagle, steepe eagle, tawny eagle, cattle egret, great egret, African finfoot, African firefinch, common fiscal, African fish-eagle, southern black flycatcher, crested francolin, natal francolin, crested guineafowl, helmeted guineafowl, hamerkop, African harrier-hawk, grey heron, African hoopoe, African grey hornbill, red-billed hornbill, southern yellow-billed hornbill, trumpeter hornbill, hadeda ibis, African jacana, brown-hooded kingfisher, giant kingfisher, pied kingfisher, black-shouldered kite, blacksmith lapwing, crowned lapwing, yellow-throated longclaw, speckled mousebird, common myna, fiery-necked nightjar, black-headed oriole, osprey, red-billed oxpecker, three-banded plover, red-capped robin-chat, lilac-breasted roller, white-browed scrub-robin, black sparrowhawk, black-bellied starling, Cape glossy starling, red-winged starling, black-winged stilt, African stonechat, white stork, woolly-necked stork, yellow-billed stork, collared sunbird, eastern olive sunbird, lesser striped swallow, wire-tailed swallow, spotted thick-knee, Kurrichane thrush, southern black tit, purple-crested turaco, Cape turtle-dove, white-backed vulture, African pied wagtail, blue waxbill, spectacled weaver, Cape white-eye, white-winged widowbird and emerald-spotted wood-dove

The iMfolozi side of the park - much less hilly and more open savannah than the north side of the park.

A male Bateleur - he stayed in this tree with us directly under him for about 30 minutes.

A brown-hooded kingfisher - interestingly they were seen no where near water, they were getting insects and small reptiles off the ground.

A white-fronted bee-eater - such cute birds!

Male leopard seen on Monday morning - we also saw a female leopard a day or two after, but she was too fast to get a picture.  This guy walked down the road in front of us for a good 5 minutes before he ditched off into the bush.

Female cheetah and her adolescent cub eating an adult male impala they just killed - notice the blood on her face.  This was the most amazing sighting :-)!

Our group for this week - Bettina, Claire, me, Michelle and Regina.