South Africa: 3 weeks and 3 days = 5 lodges and 5 reserves

I"m just back from one of my photo trips to southern Africa. This particular trip had me do a 3 day scouting trip to one lodge and add a one day shoot at a very unique additional private wildlife reserve. I did a 4 day, 3 night scouting trip to Madikwe and spent one day in Pilanesberg, but the basic trip was to be 7 days in some of the most pristine low veld territory in Africa: 4 days in southern portion of Timbavati (Greater Kruger) and 3 days in northern Timbavati, Greater Kruger which has more hills and mopane forest that many elephants prefer. From their the main group spent 5 days in Zimanga, located in KwaZulu Natal which is a private reserve designed for photographers. On the back end of the trip, a smaller group wanted to join me in examining Tiger Canyons, a rather controversial private reserve raising free roaming tigers in a wilderness setting.

For this trip, I chose to pack 'light' taking:
Body: 5D MkIII and Canon 7D MkII body
Lenses: a pair of 100-400mm verII lenses, a 24-105mm lens, a 14 mm Rokinon (for night photography)
Accessories: Travel tripod and cable release, Laptop and 2 external storage drives (each 1 TB)


Overall, I have to say that after more than 20 safari trips, this was by far the most action packed. Over the next several posts, I will tell several of the stories, but here is an opening tease of images.

Oh man, yes, Can't wait to see more!

Just seeing a rhino, wow.

The Rhino above and the zebra were both from Pilanesberg NP, which is only a few hours drive from Jo'berg. As I noted earlier, A budy of mine and I flew in several days before my group and spent time scouting a few future shooting locations. My plane arrived from the U.S in the early morning. I took a rental car and drove to Sun City, which is where Pilanesberg is located. Since we had a free afternoon and Joe had never seen Africa, I went into Pilanesberg to give him a tease of what to expect. During this little self drive safari, we saw a lot of game including wildebeest, impala, giraffe, elephants, hippo and many birds. Here are a few more shots from Pilanesberg.

The bird below is a white fronted bee eater.

This is definitely a thread worth watching. Great stuff so far. Can't wait to hear all the stories.

Following the night in Sun City with my 'day trip' to Pilanesberg, I drove the next morning to my true first destination, Jaci's Lodge in Madikwe. While only a 2 or 3 additional hours of driving, it was a very interesting drive as we past numerous small villages with platinum mines near the towns and the last 35km were dirt roads with a lot of goats and cattle roaming freely along the roadway.

The reason I was visiting Madikwe that I often lead photographers to Chobe NP in Botswana. Unfortunately, Chobe is not known for big cats and most Americans want to see leopards are lions up close before heading home. To accommodate this, we often fly to Jo'berg, spend a 'wasted night', then go to Timbavati, where leopards/lions are almost guaranteed, the next day. I decided that if Madikwe had great game viewing, I could fly future groups directly from Chobe (Kasane) to Gaberone, which is just across the border from Madikwe and we could be seeing lions/leopards without losing a day. In future trips, after a few days in Madikwe, we could do an easy transfer to Jo'berg and then home.

Other teases of Jaci's is that they are building a unique water level viewing/photography hide, called the 'terrapin hide' in the middle of a pond that is heavily frequented by game. I wanted to check this out. (more later on the hide). In addition, Madikwe has a few animals we seldom see on my safaris including cheetah, brown hyena, springbok and ostrich. Also, Madikwe has off road tracking of predators, allowing better photos and night game drives allwoing a fun experience that one cannot do in Chobe. (Chobe NP nor Kruger NP allow off road driving in the main park areas. This can typically only be done on private reserves. Generally night game drives are also only in private reserves.)

I'm please to report that Madikwe delivered on the big cats. In particular, I was really pleased to learn that the lions are 'kalahari lions' which have big black manes compared to most other lions and are about 15% larger. Here are a few photos from my first days there.

Rhino picture is fantastic!

Yes, yes, and yes! Thank you for sharing your stories and photographs. I'm following this thread for sure!

Bryan

Great shots so far, looking forward to some more

Awesome! More pictures please!

Oh, I'm in hook, line and sinker

As I mentioned, Jaci's has it all ... and they are adding a hide. Here is a view of construction of the hide. This shot was taken from an existing elevated hide. Water will come to within two feet of the top of the hide once the water hole is refilled. On the opposite side of this image are slots about a foot tall by 3 feet wide for shooting. The hide should accommodate about 8 people.

Now back to the safari. One of the most amazing sightings I had at Madikwe was a mother white rhino nursing her calf. The calf can be seen from under the mom. While this is a nice shot, it's hampered by two things: 1) sun had set, so this is shot in very poor light and 2) you will note that I'm shooting from the wrong side of the rhino. This was very frustrating, but Jaci's, while having off road tracking of predators, does not allow off road of elephants and rhino, two non-predator members of the Big Five. This was a huge disappointment and one of the negatives I must consider if I take folks to Madikwe. On the other hand, they have both white and black rhino, which few reserves have.

buddy4344 wrote in post #17642627
This was very frustrating, but Jaci's, while having off road tracking of predators, does not allow off road of elephants and rhino, two non-predator members of the Big Five. This was a huge disappointment and one of the negatives I must consider if I take folks to Madikwe.

An edit to the quote, of course Cape Buffalo are also of the Big 5 and also a grazer so you also cannot off road track them. In addition, the buffalo have been darted numerous times to check for TB, so they were skiddish and often ran from our vehicle into thick brush. In the photo below, you can see how the buffalo are on 'high alert' as I photographed them. You can also see that the bush is quite thick in some areas of Madikwe, which means off road would have been difficult anyway. This was a real surprise because in Timbavati and Chobe, one can almost pet the buffalo (NOTE: NEVER touch wild game when on safari!).

Regardless of these setbacks, the overall game viewing was amazing. I really enjoyed watching the impala run around. Also of high value to me is that their are large open areas at Madikwe where I was able to photo springbok, which also liked to run around for the camera.

In this same open area as the springbok were numerous kori bustards, which are the largest flying bird and also ostrich. Both of these are uncommon at many other locations, so this added to the trip.

Also, on my last day at Madikwe, I was lucky enough to have two male kudu give me the perfect trio of images. First, they posed in perfect evening sunlight (my portrait shot), then they gave me a profile action shot as they ran across the roadway. As a final show off move, they stopped between me and the setting sun to give me nice rim lighting. This was an excellent sighting.