20 Sept 09- Mala Mala

We flew from Mashatu to Polokwane, South Africa in order to go through Customs and then returned to the plane to fly to our final destination: the Mala Mala Game Reserve.

The airfield at Mala Mala supports a few nearby reserves but is even smaller than Limpopo Valley Airfield: no buildings or tower.

The drive to the reserve was short and we arrived in good order. Because our flight had been delayed, there was a bit of a rush to get us checked into our rooms and out on a game drive, so an unfortunate thing ended up happening: the staff decided to put the three of us in one truck and Michael and Gary (who we had met at Mashatu) in another.

I did take the time to get a few pictures of the wildlife I could see from my room before going out on the drive:

We got into the truck with our driver (no tracker at Mala Mala for some reason) and a couple who were already there, and we were off on our first game drive at Mala Mala.

We started off well, with some lions relaxing:


A couple of them playing:

This shot is one of the ones I like best:


But this one is good too:


At this point the lions got up and began moving.

Other game drive groups had showed up as well and it began to feel like we were herding the lions, which somehow didn't seem right to us.

Eventually we left the lions alone and I took a shot of the evening sky:

This little guy is a scrub hare.

On the way back to camp you cross a river which was pretty low when we were there, but still big enough for this guy:

Upon our return to camp, I spoke with our driver and the camp manager about changing things around a bit so that the three of us and Gary and Michael could resume riding in the same truck and they said they would try to rearrange things.

We spoke more at dinner and they asked that we try the arrangements as they were for the morning drive and see how it went, which seemed reasonable to me... although I didn't understand the difficulty of moving two newly arrived people from one truck into another truck containing three newly arrived people...

Susan reminded me that we were only going to be at Mala Mala for one full day however: the following day would have two game drives and that would basically be it.

I spoke again with our first driver (who was a great guy and helped us out with some photography tips!) and the camp manager. I told them it was not acceptable after all, and that something needed to be done. Given that the trucks could carry six or seven people each, I just could not see any reason why they could not accommodate us.

They promised to figure something out.

After dinner that night, I did my usual bit of archiving all my pictures on USB hard drives (two of them to make damn sure I lost nothing!) while sitting in front of the sliding door in my room. There were animals wandering around periodically, but as dark as it was, photographing them was next to impossible, and not worth it...
Until I saw two hippos walking around, mother and child!
The pics I got were not great but I post them anyway, just because.

The next morning we met up and the five of us got into a truck with our new driver Lucky, but that is for another post.

To finish this post, I would like to make sure readers understand that we DID like Mala Mala, and appreciated that the manager adjusted the trucks to suit us. We did. The initial confusion happened only because our plane had been delayed and we were about four hours late arriving at Mala Mala. I do wish it hadn't happened, and I do not entirely understand why it was so difficult to get us all in the same truck, but in the end we did enjoy our time at Mala Mala, so thanks go out to them as well.