Thornybush Camp, South Africa

This is our second time on OAT’s Ultimate Africa Safari. Why repeat the same trip? Our favorite trips involve nature and learning about people’s cultures in non-Western nations. The way OAT does a Safari does an ideal combination of both. We’re not sure with Mary’s health how long we’ll be able to do trips to third world countries. We first did the trip in 2008 (my blog labels it South Africa)  and really enjoyed the diversity of locations and animals the trip provided. We had to divert from the standard itinerary at the time (adding Zambia and not going to Zimbabwe) because President Mugabe was terrorizing the rural areas, including the area around Hwange National Park in advance of the election. So we were interested in seeing Zimbabwe and learning what has happened in the last nine years. When we took the trip last time, we did the post-trip to Cape Town, but hadn’t done the pre-trip to Kruger National Park. We heard great things from the folks who had done the pre-trip, and thus we signed up for the pre-trip. This time we won’t do the post-trip because it is very similar to what we did then. If you prefer to watch a video rather than read all this detail, a narrated video is available on youtube. 

As expected it was a long flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg, 15 hours, but I managed five hours sleep and Mary got a couple hours. The good news was that we arrived about 6 PM, we had a beer at the O.R.Tambo Protea Hotel near the airport and went to bed. The hotel is a typical standard airport hotel, nothing fancy, but practical. The meals and drinks served were just fine.

Thornybush Waterside Lodge with Vervet Monkeys

Our flight to Hoedspruit was scheduled for 10:15 but with delays we left at 11:50, flying for about 45 minutes. It was chaos at this little airport, two of the three daily flights arrived at the same time. Almost all the passengers were headed to one of the game lodges in the area. As we landed we could see giraffes and warthogs around the airport. We made it to the Thornybush Waterside Lodge about 2:30. The lodge is quite luxurious (true rooms, not tents, phones, and a heating pad on your bed for the cold nights) with a view of a waterhole, near the pubic area.  

During our visit, we saw lots of Vervet Monkeys and Nyala. After a quick coffee, we were off on our first game drive by 3:30. One of vans delivering guests had seen a leopard and two cubs on the way to the lodge, so that was the target for our guide, Roland, and tracker, Anthony. Our first wild animal sighting was at the waterhole, near the lodge, a hippopotamus was headed back into the water. They soon found fresh leopard tracks on the road. Anthony and another tracker left on foot to track the leopard through the bush, while we went around on the road. The object for the trackers was to move the leopards toward our vehicle, just by walking the bush. Roland found a spot on the road where we had tracks showing a leopard had dragged its catch into the trees, but we couldn’t find his stash. We started moving along the fence line of the reserve to see if the leopards had tunneled under the fence and left. No such sign – the leopard and cubs were still nearby, we just hadn’t seen them. We did see Nyala, Giraffes and Waterbucks. As dark was approach we found a spot where the guides could smell the leopard’s kill, but still no sight of the leopard. As we returned to the lodge, Anthony used the spotlight to find nocturnal animals, but we had little luck. A bust of a game drive. We were then treated to our first camp meal – as we would find at every camp, the meals were great.

Following the Leopard Tracks

Thornybush is named for all the thorns on the bushes, we were warned to be careful of them as the vehicle had to twist through the brush. They were our most likely injury. (Both of us, ended up with some jacket tears from the thorns.) Thornybush is a private reserve of 14,000 hectares that is open to KrugerNational Park. In January, 2016 South Africa began a project to take down the fences between the private reserves and Kruger NP. Over 25% of those fences are now down and it has significantly increased the diversity of animals that can be seen here. There are now over 3 million hectares of connected open land in the greater Kruger area. Because Thornybush is a private reserve, only the vehicles from the 13 lodges in the reserve can conduct game drives here. They can leave the roads to follow the animals (we found this to be quite an advantage to getting good views of the animals), and they also limit to two the number of vehicles that can simultaneously be at a particular sight, radioing each other to take turns of anything significant that is found.