Saturday 21st April
Port Elizabeth is known as the ‘Friendly City’, with a busy commercial and industrial centre of the Eastern Cape. One of the largest cities in South Africa. Known as the Detroit of South Africa because of automobile manufacturing.
Nearby are several outstanding game reserves.
Five am alarm, much too early, and it’s still dark!
Ship stationary just off the coast, with docking delayed. Everyone on time for their meeting time for tours and everyone hanging about because of delays and no announcements to avoid confusion.
Eventually things got started and we made it through immigration to join our tour bus.
Bus moved quickly out of town mostly along empty motorways and past industrial areas. Then through the bush with hundreds of termite mounds pretty much the only things of interest.
Eventually reached the area of all the game reserves, first sight of game being a few Zebras. Once we arrived at our destination, Pumba Game Reserve we had a refreshing glass of lemonade before getting into our 4x4 to start the safari.
Great excitement on board as each animal was spotted with an accompaniment of camera clicks.
Slowly the cries died down to just another Impala and our ranger suggested we would get nowhere if he had to stop for every animal.
The ticks on our check list grew steadily through the morning. Impala, Lion, Kudu, Hartebeest (a kind of antelope), Giraffe, White Rhinoceros, Wildebeest, Warthog, Zebra and a White Lion.
Female Impala's
Male Impala
A very sleepy female lion
Kudu
Hartebeest
Wildebeest
White Lion - a Pumba Reserve speciality
Also a few birds which were hardly mentioned except for the Tick Birds on the backs of the animals and the Egyptian Geese.
Time for lunch at the Game Lodge. An excellent selection of dishes including an Impala Stew, all eaten al fresco with Vervet Monkeys in the trees trying for a free lunch being chased off by the staff.
Vervet Monkey - eyeing up the lunch
Curtailed lunch a bit to get back to wildlife spotting before most of the other vehicles. Our ranger found us excellent views of Elephants and a Hippopotamus to add to our species list before we had to return to reboard our coach back to the ship, all too soon.
Another long drive back without much of note to see, not passing through the town where there might have been something.
Time for a cuppa and a relax before dinner, a late sailaway and an early night, been a long day.
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