Good old days

On Monday we picked up Steve in Phalaborwa. It was so great seeing him again and talk about “the good old times” when we were at SanWild together almost three years ago. We had dinner in Phalaborwa and it was a wonderful evening with a lot of catching up and updating…
I guess because of the fact that Steve is back, we had to paint the patterns on the main building in the Savannah camp on Tuesday. Although the combination of Steve and I painting is a bit risky, we have a couple of nice anecdotes from our previous stay!!!

Smoking vehicle

After the morning feeding on Wednesday (by the way, I was not happy at all to see that we still have to cut up baby chicks for owls at seven in the morning!!!!) we drove to Tzaneen where we ended up spending the whole day. We also had to pick up Louise’s bakkie, which was at the garage. And of course, the car was not ready when we got there so Steve and I waited at the garage while John and Miller went to the travel agent in order to pick up Miller’s ticket.

We waited for 1.5 hours and finally left to meet the other two. We parked the car and did some shopping and when we came out of the mall two guys were standing next to the bakkie, asking me if this was my car. It apparently started to smoke after we parked it and these guys were pouring 8 bottles of water over it in order to cool it down. They had to wait for about 30min before we came back and I thought that this was very kind of them, not many people would have cared!

Most probably a .......... leopard!

We had a quiet evening with a wonderful dinner (no wonder, now that Steve is around!). John and I spent some time sitting on the couch and watch the waterhole (for those who don’t know, there’s a light now during the night) and I’m still extremely excited when I tell you know what happened. I saw movement and I thought that it would most probably just be a warthog or something as “unexciting” as that (not very kind to say, I know!) But luckily I kept on looking and guess what, the warthog turned out to be a leopard! It was sooooo amazing to watch him\her drink water, look up, drink more water and then quietly walk away.

John and I were sitting there with a big smile on our faces, not believing what we’ve just seen.

Hyenas attacked baby rhino

I honestly don’t remember what we did on Thursday but the most important thing is that John and I saw the leopard again! We must have done lots and lots of good things in our lives for deserving such a great sighting twice in a row.

On Friday morning the baby white rhino arrived. Hyenas attacked the poor little guy and they ripped his tail off. The wound looked awful but hopefully it will heal properly.

Since the baby’s arrival, John is on rhino duty. He sleeps next to his enclosure, feeds him every four hours, talks to him and makes sure that they can develop the strong bond between them, which is needed. It’s definitely a lot of work for John but he just loves being a rhino dad and it’s wonderful to see how the rhino reacts as soon as John is near him.

Back To Suzanne's Diary