Africa 2017-Day 5

Day 5- Going to the Dogs

Today we got up even earlier and left in our land rovers  at 6 sharp in search of the elusive wild dogs.  Eric was definitely a man on a mission flying down the bumpy tracks (for Toby and Marty-faster than I drove in Big Bend) through the brush, stopping occasionally to look for tracks.  We were working with the rest of our group with their guide, Doc.  At one point, all four guides and trackers left us to traipse off into the bush to find “the scent”.  

It was very disconcerting watching them speak some African tongue to each other and then all gesture in different directions apparently all sure of the dogs’ hiding place.  They can’t all be right.  This went on for 3 hours during which we had a few short respites to see a few birds (in horrible light), 

 

steenbok, 

a few warthogs, 

a cool monitor lizard that I found (those new eyes again) in a tree, 

which then jumped or fell to the ground 

and scampered into a nearby pond, 

some baboons at a distance, 

and two male impalas that were in a head butting war (Eric was too focused to stop and watch this, though).  

Doc stopped with the rest of our group to view a newborn (4 days old) giraffe calf, but again, Eric plodded onward much to our chagrin.

We did spend a bit of time with some elephants who seemed very curious of us.  They were so close, we could have petted them.  I tried uploading a bit of video.  Hope it works.

After leaving the elephants, we pressed onward in search of you know who.  At roughly 9:30, We spotted a dark shape in the distance on the road, the wild dogs!!!  There was a pack of 6 dogs that had been chasing impalas all night, and seemed now to be exhausted.  They have black and brown pigmentation with huge pointed ears.  Another major feature is their long skinny legs. African wild dogs have evolved into a light build, long legs and endurance to become effective hunters.  The pack could certainly have used a shower, they smelled horribly.  Doc thought one of them was separated from the pack and had some GI problems.  Got to watch out for bad impala.

We left the dogs to head back to camp.  After driving around in circles for 3 hours we all were quite disoriented, thinking we had at least an hour drive back to the camp.  To our surprise, we were no more than ½ mile from our starting point.  The dogs had been in our backyard all along!

Back at Chapungu, we had our breakfast and did any last minute packing for the trip back to Jo-burg.  On the access road out of Thornybush we had a few nice sightings including a group of wildebeests that posed for us while the driver was kind enough to pull over.

The two German couples with whom Jeri and I spent the last three days were on our flight to Jo-burg.  At the baggage claim, we said our auf wiedersehens to our new freundin and met our shepherd from OAT who got us to our hotel here for the night.

Tomorrow we fly to Victoria Falls in Zambia and then go overland to Chobe in Botswana.  We get to sleep in tomorrow-don’t have to leave until 8:30.