Francolin | Diary of an Adventurous Retiree

I am joining Trent’s Weekly Smile challenge this week.

I had a lot to smile about this week.

My first smile is something I’ve been smiling about for a few weeks actually so I’m including it in this post. My handsome husband is now a Cover Boy! He appeared both on the cover and on a centrefold of Ski-boat Magazine. One of his friends quipped that it’s sold more copies than Play Boy this month!

My Cover Boy holding his magazine in our local store

Earl and Willie on Kiora

I smiled this week when I was invited to join a group of ladies at my friend Sarah’s for tea. Back in Cape Town it would be unusual to find the majority of the company speaking Afrikaans but here the English speaker is in the minority. I chatted away in my second language and smiled when I was complimented for doing so. They were ALL prepared to swap to English for my sake! Dankie dames vir julle vriendelikheid. Ek het die oggend so baie geniet.

Bly Kalm

The next thing that made me smile was a visit from my darling daughter. Since she was very little she’s been a whiz at doing jigsaw puzzles. After breakfast on Saturday she decided that she’d buy a big one to do over the weekend. She mentioned this to our host at the coffee shop and he disappeared only to reappear with one he had stowed away – “If you don’t finish it, I’ll come over and do it next week,” he said. The picture was most appropriate – I keep telling my daughter to kiss the frog to find her prince but she refuses to do it!

Getting started on the 1000 pieces!

Almost done – Willie will have to come over to finish it because I am useless at puzzles.

I smiled again when some Cape Francolin visited my garden. They were not shy of us at all and seemed to say thank you for the seed we put out.

When guests come calling you have to feed them

Relaxed enough to show their affection in front of us!

And finally I smiled when The Earl suggested we go away to warmer climes for a couple of weeks. “Where to?” I asked thinking a northern game reserve would be nice. But we’re heading that way in November and he had other plans. “How about a tropical island? The Maldives, Seychelles, Malaysia or Thailand?” We decided on Thailand and we leave next Saturday – I have a very big smile on my face!

Very much looking forward to something like this!

THURSDAY 29 March 2012 BERG EN DAL TO SKUKUZA

The phone alarm disturbed my peaceful dreams and got me out of bed at 4:30 a.m. Once everything was ready for packing, we woke the kids, gave them breakfast, made sure nothing was left behind and got them into the car. The weather was warm but overcast and it had rained in the night. We had some drizzle during the day but it was still hot!

Our first interesting bird sighting was of a pair of crested francolin.

Crested Francolin

Crossing a low-level bridge we found a common sandpiper and a water thick-knee.

Common Sandpiper

Water Thick-knee

Dwarf mongoose often take over abandoned anthills and our cutest sighting got everyone going – ooh – how sweet!

Dwarf Mongoose

Things were becoming a little boring as we passed bush after bush and strained our eyes searching into the long glass for some sort of creature to appear. Then I saw across the river a load of elephants storming down to drink and swim. We watched them through the trees then realised that they were going to cross the river and come up onto the road in front of us. It was an enormous herd of about 60 jumbos and they raised their trunks and trumpeted as they came stumbling up the bank towards us. Simon was suddenly frozen into silence on my lap. Shannon beseeched them – please don’t hurt us – we just want to look at you! They just stared at us, waved their trunks and then trundled past in front and behind the car. The children were awed and when they were gone, Simon said, “That really freaked me out!” It was awesome to see such a big herd with ellies of all ages from tiny babies to great big mommies.

The excitement of that awesome sighting stayed with us for a while. Then Joshua spotted and Shannon identified an immature bateleur. (The competition for being the first to spot and name the birds is great!)

After the recent flooding in the Kruger National Park, some bridges were damaged and to our horror we found the one we wanted to cross still not repaired. Our choice was to retrace our route or take a road that is only open to visitors to Biyamati Bush Lodge. Another car was in the same predicament so jointly we decided to take the out of bounds road. We would not usually do this but there were not warnings that the road was closed so this would be our excuse if caught. (We weren’t)

On the way we found buffalo, rhino, kudu, impala, some birds but nothing else.

We stopped at Afsaal for brunch and then continued to Skukuza. We found warthog, giraffe and zebra, more kudu and impala, a kori bustard – but not good enough for a photograph and of course many birds.

Black-collared Barbet

Dark-capped bulbul

Brown-hooded kingfisher

We checked into family cottage 229 which consisted of two en suite bedrooms and a spacious living area. We moved the extra bed in our room to the second bedroom so the cousins could all be together.

After settling in, lunch and a nap we took a walk next to the river and found a few birds, then went to the shop.

Simon said the best part of his day was having an ice-cream and moving into the cottage!