Greetings Everyone!
Another month has gone by and another action-packed month for us on the reserve. And although winter is creeping in on us, and trees are losing their leaves, the Aloes have sprung into flower and are just awesome! Aloe ridge is a sea of bright orange. Not only are they in flower, their leaves too are refreshed and look brand new. What a view for us at Bukela, where we have several blooming aloes outside the office.
And speaking of views/sightings from our office: we had a great visit from the buffalo herd, who couldn’t believe their luck when they set eyes on the green grass & delicious plants outside our office door. Even the very young ones seemed to have new courage when it came to cruising in and enjoying the greens.
We also have huge pleasure in introducing our five new cheetah cubs! We hadn’t seen the female cheetah for a while, and suspected she had disappeared to have her cubs. And we were right. From our calculations they were born on the 20th April.
She has them tucked up in the same rocky outcrop that she had her last cubs in. They are out of bounds for game drive viewing at the moment, but in about two more weeks she will feel more confident to bring her cubs out in to the open to share them with us all. And our Rangers will take great pleasure in showing our guests the gorgeous little fluff balls.
The pictures we got of them are not the best (see our gallery), as we cannot get close, so we took them from the ridge above their den site. We were so excited to have seen them, healthy and full of beans, climbing all over their Mum and wrestling each other.
She never took her eyes off us, whilst we were there, so we didn’t spend too much time there, in case we unsettled her.
Aside from all this activity, we have also been doing a little team building during this month. The major activity was all of us getting stuck in to build a wooden platform for the game drive vehicles, to make it easier for our elderly guests to get into the vehicles.
Whilst most of the work was done by our Rangers, you’ll see in the gallery that us girls just couldn’t be left out of the making! A big Thank You to the Rangers – the steps look great.
We have also been very busy building an animal capture boma, which is just about finished. The new boma was christened by a group of Zebra, that will leave for their new home in a day or two.
The animal capture boma is a very important part of our ongoing conservation and game management programme on the reserve. We’re fortunate to have a large and healthy population of a number of species of plains game like zebra. Our delicate job is to keep optimum numbers of these species on the reserve to ensure that no population grows to the detriment of another. In order to achieve this long-term goal, we share our resources with other reserves in South Africa, in return for income to source the animals for populations we’re working to build on the reserve.
Fortunately for us, whenever we move animals we work closely with our two resident vets on the Reserve, Dr William Fowlds & Dr Peter Brothers. They know just which Reserves & Game Parks are in need of certain species, so we are always able to confirm good homes for our bountiful game.
As you can see in the gallery pics, the trailer can reverse right into the entrance, so that the Zebra do not see anything outside of the boma. Then there is a viewing deck above the boma, where vets and reserve owners can view them easily. We also feed them from this deck, so that there is minimum human contact with the animals. A huge thank you goes out to Rodger & the Bushman’s Team, as well as assistance from Centralised Maintenance for the hard work on this boma. A job well done!
A short update on our baby buffalo: She is doing remarkably well and she is really growing very well. As you’ll see in the gallery, her mother has also put a ton of weight on, because of all the nourishment we have provided her so she can keep up with the needs of this young lady.
We’ve also had some fun and games down at Hlosi, where we did not know whether to laugh or cry at the damage. A whole herd of elephant came down to enjoy the cool water that the swimming pool had to offer, and with the sheer weight of them all, they left us some rather large elephant footprints on the wading step of our pool!
Ah well… what a privilege to have these honoured guests to a pool party. An emergency trip to town for the materials we needed to repair it and it’s as good as new. Our guests thoroughly enjoyed the close up encounter.
We’ve also been very busy with our wonderful and growing Kids Safari programme. Hlosi has hosted its third birthday party for a group of 8 year olds – it seems to be the perfect getaway for the ages of 6 – 12yrs. They had an absolute ball and we kept them busy with all sorts of things – from game drives, to tracking different animals & identifying animal spoor competitions. The kids decided on their own menus during their stay, and we had a super happy bunch of kids at the end of their trip.
Otherwise, we are pleased to say that we are ready & organized for the coming month and let’s hope it will be a busy one for us all. Bring it on! Thank you to all our agents for their continued support, and hope to see many more
guests coming our way.
From us all on the Amakhala Reserve, we say farewell until next month.
Kerry