The Wild Dogs at Madikwe

On our trip to Madikwe at the end of February we had a very cool experience. We mentioned to our guide, Pule, that Thom really wanted to see the wild dogs. When we were at Madikwe last May we saw a few wild dogs in the boma that were about to be released to integrate with the packs in the park but it wasn't quite the same as seeing the dogs out and about in the wild.

The wild dogs are very special. They are the most endangered predator in the world. They are also known as the "painted dogs" and have never been successfully domesticated. They hunt for fun as as well a food and most game parks can't handle having many if any of the animals. Madikwe has a few small packs that are constantly on the move which makes them very difficult to site. We know because we have driven many, many miles all over the park looking for those dogs.

On this game drive, our guide Pule headed off for where the dogs had been spotted the morning before. We drove quite a while and then on one narrow road, we came across another safari vehicle heading in the opposite direction. They assured us that nothing had been seen from the direction they had come. But Pule persisted feeling confident that the dogs would be close since they had fed well that morning and the day had been too hot for them to want to roam about.

About 2 minutes after we left the other vehicle, Pule spotted some ears sticking up about 500 feet off road. We took off in the direction of the ears and came up on the pack just hanging out. They were a little disturbed at first by our presence but the heat soon convinced them that they should settle back down and continue their rest. This gave us an amazing opportunity to observe the pack very closely for about 20 minutes.

our first glimpse of the dogs:

the dogs settling down under a shady tree:

just hanging out with the dogs:

see how close Thom is to the dogs:

To see many, many more photos of the wild dogs and other things that we saw on this trip to Madikwe, you can view our photos at Shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3WQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5

The Elephant Who Came to Breakfast

Thom's mother Kathie came for a visit at the end of February. We took her to Madikwe for a night and stayed at Buffalo Ridge Safari Lodge (http://buffaloridgesafari.com/). It's one of the community lodges in Madikwe, managed and staffed by a local community. When we arrived, the manager told us that we were having crocodile ribs for lunch. We immediately thought of Fred Flinstone and his big rack of ribs on top of the car. Thom was really looking forward to tackling such ribs. Lunch turned out to be quite nice even though the entree was crocodile WRAPS -- not ribs. Grilled croc meat, asparagus, cucumber, tomato, too many carrots served in a tortilla wrap.

Anyway, this blog is actually about the Friday morning game drive. When we stopped for morning coffee, our guide noticed that there was an elephant far in the distance coming our way. He told us that although he wouldn't have stopped if he had seen the elephant before stopping, we should be able to finish coffee before the elephant got to us if he continued on the path it seemed he was taking. So we had coffee and hot chocolate while we watched the elephant come closer and closer.

When our guide noticed that the elephant was traveling much faster than it had appeared and not veering from the "road", he quickly packed up the coffee stuff and told us to get in the truck...NOW.

We, of course, obeyed immediately. As our guide mentioned, we really did not want to become famous for being trampled by an elephant on an early morning game drive. Our guide positioned the vehicle so that we could get out of the way of the elephant no matter which direction he decided to take and we had to do a bit of manuevering as the elephant approached. It turned out that the elephant was very cranky. Evidently he had struck out on the elephant club scene the night before and was still looking for "a date".

The cranky elephant did pass by without bothering us and we went on our way to enjoy the rest of our game drive.

If you have a lot of extra time and want to see more of our photos from this adventure in Madikwe, you can view our photos at shutterfly: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbtWzhs0bt3WQ&emid=sharshar&linkid=link5

Brrrrrrr!

We now know why winter is low season for safaris in this part of Africa. It turns out that it can get very cold in Africa and driving around in an open air vehice across the plains at 7:00 in the morning or 7:00 at night can be down right painful.

At the end of May, Thom's mother (Kathie) and her friend (Vickie) visited from upstate New York (see photo above). Notice how bright and sunny and warm it looks.

The day after they arrived, we took them to Madikwe Game Park for a real African safari experience and very nearly got frost bite. Even the visitors from New York (where it is winter in the middle of May as well) were uncomfortably cold as you can see from the photo below.

We did manage to see some really good game on the trip. We saw elephants out wandering around, we saw a lot of rhinos (groups of 6 or more), and we even saw some wild dogs. The park had exchanged 3 dogs to help with the breeding pool since the pack is so small. The dogs were being kept in an enclosure until they could be released to join the Madikwe pack and we were able to get a really good look at them (photo below).
But our most remarkable experience on this safari was seeing a leopard very close and personal. On our first game drive Sunday evening, just after sundown there was a report that a leopard had been "spotted" close to the fence. And we found the leopard hanging out by the fence pacing up and down alongside the road that runs next to the fence. We parked and the leopard continued pacing about, at times only a couple meters away from where we were in the open truck. We spent about 15-20 minutes in very close proximity to the leopard before we had to give our spot to another group (in Madikwe only 3 vehicles are allowed to be close to an animal at any one time).

The explanation of the cat's behavior (other than just being a cat) is that it jumps the fence to hunt cattle on the Botswana side and then after it's nice steak dinner jumps back across the fence where the farmers can't shoot it. Pretty clever for a cat, don't you think?

A few other highlights:

Tau Lodge at sunrise

Vickie and Kathie learn about rhino poo