Tuesday, November 6, 1530

I’m sitting on the deck of my tent at Tamboti Tent Camp at KNP while three workers are securing a freshly painted steel cage.  The cage will be used for enclosing the refrigerator and any food.  The need for that becomes evident as I try to describe yesterday.

Flew from J’burg to Hoedspruit on a domestic turboprop de Havilland without incident.  Met up with Albie and took the relatively short drive through Orpen Gate into Tamboti.  I’d never been to Tamboti – it’s a beautiful and quiet little tent camp along the banks of the Tamboti River.  The tents are relatively permanent, mounted on wooden platforms.  Albie and I have tents overlooking the Tamboti river bed, which at present is dry.  We saw plenty of signs of elephant in the riverbed and many signs of baboon around camp.  As is often the case, there was a sheet of paper taped to the doors warning not to leave food about because the vervets, baboons and honey badgers in this area have become accustomed to stealing food.

We went on a late afternoon drive, and I tried to get used to using the 600mm lens on a ‘beanbag’ draped over the window in the back seat of Albie’s 4x4.  We didn’t see a lot of wildlife though we had a very cool sighting of a Southern Ground Hornbill carrying a toad he’d captured.  He suddenly darted off a couple of meters and caught a skink and then gathered the toad back up so that he was strutting around the side of the roadway with a skink, the skink’s tail, which had apparently come off during the chase, and a toad.

Southern Ground Horbill with prey

When we returned to camp, we came upon disaster.  Baboons had been in both tents.  They’d tossed some of my stuff around, like burglars in a hurry and creating a bit of a mess (poop prints, peeing on the deck), but they’d found all of the food in Albie’s tent.  It looked like full-on debauchery, with food debris everywhere, mixed in with baboon pee and poop.  It was a gawdawful mess. 

What the Little Bastards did to Albie's tent!

The camp management was reasonably responsive.  They moved Albie into and adjoining tent and provided at least a rudimentary cleaning that night.  Albie still managed to pull together a nice steak dinner and we sat around talking about what a gawdaful mess it all was.  Then, while sitting around camp, a honey badger showed up, searching high and low for food.  He was quite bold and came within 5 feet of us without fear but also without any sign of aggression.  We bundled the food items up, secured them as well as possible and split to go to bed. 

I didn’t sleep at all.  All night I heard the honey bader(s?) snuffling around the tent, knocking over trash cans and the like. Also, I had genets up in the bush right next to the tent squabbling, squealing, churring and purring all night long.  And to top it off, the bastard baboons were sleeping nearby and would periodically awaken to have a shouting match before settling back down.

In the morning, we found that the damned honey badger had broken into Albie’s abandoned tent, opened the refrigerator and took most of what the baboons didn’t want (baboons apparently don’t like mushrooms and didn’t seem to know how to open the container of yogurt – no problem for the honey badger).  So, another minor clean up. 

We secured tents as well as possible, went on a couple of nice game drives today.  Again, didn’t see a lot of wildlife, but got some shots of baboons (the bastards) in very nice lighting and on the way in this evening we found some very young jackal pups.  We’re planning to try and shoot them in the morning, when they should be nicely backlit.  Wish us luck with that plan.

When we returned, we found that baboons had been in both tents again.  Mine was again tossed without major damage, though they did tear up the bag that I keep my lens cleaning supplies in.  The apparently just made a courtesy visit to Albies.  I think we have a better plan for securing items but it’s still annoying that the little bastards come in and go through everything.  It’s the same sensation of violation that follows having your house burgled, know what I mean?

And now its 9:15 pm, I’m exhausted and I’m going to sleep with the fan on all night to try and drown out the noise of the bush.  Three thirty am wake up call to go shoot some jackal pups!