After a half a day of flights and travel (including a flight on single engine plane that landed us on the dirt airstrip here at the lodge), we arrived at Djuma Game Lodge in the Sabi Sands district of the Kruger National Park. The weather is very hot, bright sun, will have to be careful as I will burn very easily here, both of us will. The lodge is beautiful, built out in the bush here, with a common deck area, dining room and lounge, a small craft shop etc. They even have a little hut offering massages and other treatments ( might avail myself of that tomorrow).
We arrived in time to catch the tail end of lunch, they make an extensive buffet spread here for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our room (hut) is gorgeous, huge bed, cool concrete floors, big bathroom with a big tub, outdoor shower, and plunge pool outside (private) with a second attached “hut” that acts as a lounge. And a private viewing deck. The property has a bit of higher electrical fencing to keep the elephants from getting too close, but the impala and nyala and other creatures can all come quite close, and do during the day.
We had just enough time to settle and unpack and then get ready for the afternoon/evening game drive. First tea and cake is served on the common deck, and then you depart with your guide about 4:30 pm and are gone until 7:30 pm. Our ranger is a local fellow named Solly Sithole, who rides with his spotter, who rides up front on the jeep to help spot and track game while Solly drives. They are very great guys, and really good at what they do – often they stop to follow lion or leopard tracks in the sand of the roads (you can see from one of my photos them doing just that). You ride in open Landrovers that fit about 6-9 people – we are riding with the same group, two other couples from England. There are a lot of dirt roads (bumpy), and they also go off the roads through the grass when they are trying to find more elusive game.
Our first ride seemed uneventful for the first hour, with just impala, water bucks and nyala spotted … but the rangers keep in radio contact with each other, which helps when one of the “Big 5” is spotted and they can direct the other jeep to the area. The other group directed us to an area where a young leopard was resting – so we got very close and I took a few photos, although the light was waning. Its is truly INCREDIBLE to see animals this way, and even more amazing how close you can get – they seems totally un-phased by the jeeps. Solly said that it was a young leopard (about 1 ½ years old) whose mother was most likely out hunting – they say with their mothers for about 2 years. We also saw a few giraffe, also very beautiful. All in all, a good evening’s ride.
Back to the lodge for evening drinks and dinner at 8pm where we got to know our fellow guests a little better. The jeep dropped us all off at our respective huts/rooms, you are not allowed to walk the short distance between your room and the lodge after dark, without a ranger as escort, for the danger of the lions and leopards. So Solly fetched us for dinner after, and also walked us back when we were done. All the staff eats with you, which is wonderful – I met Nonku, who runs the little spa treatment place, she grew up in Durban, and we had a really interesting conversation about South Africa. I was telling her how shocking Steve and I found the living conditions for so many blacks here, and described for her our system on health care, welfare etc. And we compared wages for general labour (the $15 per hour we pay of our house cleaner, for example, which equals R90; compared to the R40 per day that cleaners or general labourers make here), and she was completely shocked by what I told her. She told me there is no minimum wage, now legislation governing work hours, no welfare, no health care, nothing – if you are poor and unemployed, you go hungry, and if you are sick and cannot afford the health care, you simply die. She would love to leave South Africa and go anywhere else she said…I guess it’s a hard place to try and get by, even for someone like her with some training, given that wages are so bad, and its hard to get ahead. The staff work full time here, a number of weeks on (6 for the rangers, 8 weeks for others) with 10-14 days off to go home and see their families. Even though Solly lives 15 minutes away, he must stay in camp, and may not see his family for weeks at a time. And they all work from early morning to late at night, so it seems there are not a lot of rules for limited working hours etc. Again, I am continually amazed at how hard people work here, and for so little.
We arrived in time to catch the tail end of lunch, they make an extensive buffet spread here for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our room (hut) is gorgeous, huge bed, cool concrete floors, big bathroom with a big tub, outdoor shower, and plunge pool outside (private) with a second attached “hut” that acts as a lounge. And a private viewing deck. The property has a bit of higher electrical fencing to keep the elephants from getting too close, but the impala and nyala and other creatures can all come quite close, and do during the day.
We had just enough time to settle and unpack and then get ready for the afternoon/evening game drive. First tea and cake is served on the common deck, and then you depart with your guide about 4:30 pm and are gone until 7:30 pm. Our ranger is a local fellow named Solly Sithole, who rides with his spotter, who rides up front on the jeep to help spot and track game while Solly drives. They are very great guys, and really good at what they do – often they stop to follow lion or leopard tracks in the sand of the roads (you can see from one of my photos them doing just that). You ride in open Landrovers that fit about 6-9 people – we are riding with the same group, two other couples from England. There are a lot of dirt roads (bumpy), and they also go off the roads through the grass when they are trying to find more elusive game.
Our first ride seemed uneventful for the first hour, with just impala, water bucks and nyala spotted … but the rangers keep in radio contact with each other, which helps when one of the “Big 5” is spotted and they can direct the other jeep to the area. The other group directed us to an area where a young leopard was resting – so we got very close and I took a few photos, although the light was waning. Its is truly INCREDIBLE to see animals this way, and even more amazing how close you can get – they seems totally un-phased by the jeeps. Solly said that it was a young leopard (about 1 ½ years old) whose mother was most likely out hunting – they say with their mothers for about 2 years. We also saw a few giraffe, also very beautiful. All in all, a good evening’s ride.
Back to the lodge for evening drinks and dinner at 8pm where we got to know our fellow guests a little better. The jeep dropped us all off at our respective huts/rooms, you are not allowed to walk the short distance between your room and the lodge after dark, without a ranger as escort, for the danger of the lions and leopards. So Solly fetched us for dinner after, and also walked us back when we were done. All the staff eats with you, which is wonderful – I met Nonku, who runs the little spa treatment place, she grew up in Durban, and we had a really interesting conversation about South Africa. I was telling her how shocking Steve and I found the living conditions for so many blacks here, and described for her our system on health care, welfare etc. And we compared wages for general labour (the $15 per hour we pay of our house cleaner, for example, which equals R90; compared to the R40 per day that cleaners or general labourers make here), and she was completely shocked by what I told her. She told me there is no minimum wage, now legislation governing work hours, no welfare, no health care, nothing – if you are poor and unemployed, you go hungry, and if you are sick and cannot afford the health care, you simply die. She would love to leave South Africa and go anywhere else she said…I guess it’s a hard place to try and get by, even for someone like her with some training, given that wages are so bad, and its hard to get ahead. The staff work full time here, a number of weeks on (6 for the rangers, 8 weeks for others) with 10-14 days off to go home and see their families. Even though Solly lives 15 minutes away, he must stay in camp, and may not see his family for weeks at a time. And they all work from early morning to late at night, so it seems there are not a lot of rules for limited working hours etc. Again, I am continually amazed at how hard people work here, and for so little.
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