Coping with kids, a new camera and monkey burglars
Sharing the selfish hobby of photography reaps rewards
With all the indignation a four-year-old can muster, my granddaughter berated me after a recent solo day trip: ”You really should have waited for me to come home before you went to Addo.”
With that admonishment ringing in my ears, when I made a booking to return to my new favourite spot in Addo, Nyathi, I made sure there was enough space for my young Addo enthusiast. She may only be four but she can name almost every animal we come across and is adept at using binoculars and a (kiddies) camera. A budding David Attenborough, perhaps.
For those who baulk at the very thought of combining a fantastic back nature experience with very young – and often loud - children (as I did when first confronted with the idea) my advice is don’t knock it until you have tried it. From the get-go I have involved my granddaughter in the whole experience, encouraging her to keep her eyes open for sightings – often she sees things before I do – and she has learnt to marvel in the beauty of nature.
While there’s no denying the fact that most of the time I would much prefer to be in Addo alone - taking photographs of the Addo animals can be a selfish hobby - there is something really special about seeing the park through the eyes of someone so young. Perhaps armed with the foolishness of youth, she shows absolutely no fear when towering elephants get really close to the car, but I have also taught to keep very quiet when the occasion demands.
Talking of photographs, any trip to Addo is a chance to put my other baby – a new mirrorless Canon RP - to the test. Technicalities scare me, so I will leave that to the experts. I generally shoot on aperture priority, occasionally moving to shutter priority for action pix and that’s as technical as I get.
I will, however, add that in the past I had been terrified of upgrading from a 300mm lens to the far more desirable 400mms. I needn’t have been though, if anything the new lens and camera is far lighter than my EOS 650D and camera shake with the 100 to 400 lens just doesn’t exist, except in the far depths of my mind.
The RP is really simple and easy to use, produces great results every time and has proved to be well worth my Black Friday investment – as a pensioner knocking R10 000 (about U$550) off the combined price of the camera and lens was a real bonus for me.
Black Friday also netted me another bargain – a one night stay in unit 6 at Nyathi, a unit which can easily accommodate six adults and said child who was delighted to be back at this fairly remote and decidedly up-market part of Addo, even though there is no internet reception at the camp. At home, internet is very much part and parcel of her daily life.
Nyathi - spoilt for choice
On this occasion I was accompanied by Addo novice, my daughter Donna, as well as two guests from the UK who all marvelled not only at the space in the luxurious three bedroom, two bathroom unit but also at the fantastic animal sightings Nyathi offers – and we had seen a lot en-route to Nyathi from the Matyholweni gate, not least of all a large herd of buffaloes with a small calf at Peasland.
Inside Nyathi’s boundaries we came across, amongst other sightings, a large elephant family, complete with a tiny baby and, under the cover of darkness, we enjoyed being mere metres away from not one but two buffaloes (for which Nyathi is named) chomping on grass on the dried up waterhole close to the camp.
The next morning, we watched in awe as animal after animal – zebra, baboons, buck and jackals – came to the small waterhole in front of our unit for a morning drink. But we had taken our eye off the ball. While we drank in the majestic view, monkeys snuck into our room, made off with a large box of biscuits, devoured the strawberries that were to have been the child’s breakfast and scattered sugar all over the place. Lesson not learnt from our previous visit.
While Nyathi will always have a special place in my heart, Addo itself never disappoints. Shortly after re-entering the park after a memorable night in the bush, we came across a meerkat family with impossibly cute and really tiny youngsters playing in the long grass.
Being the unselfish kind of person that I am (not), I (not so) happily let my passengers have the best of the sightings, passing up many a photo opportunity to ensure that, especially the overseas guests, went home armed not only with great memories, but also fantastic photographs.
After that, sightings came thick and fast. There were birds including pale chanting goshawks and blue cranes, there were buffaloes, jackals and of course ellies en-route to Hapoor where yet more ellies had gathered in their numbers, surrounding the car and thrilling our overseas guests with their close proximity.
At Spekboom a herd of ellies quietly emerged from the bush before moving in for a quick drink at the waterhole. Moving away from the waterhole, towards Marion Baree, one of the ellies delighted in playing with a twig – it was his twig and he was not giving it up easily. This was to be an experience I would repeat on my next trip to Addo although this time the elephant’s plaything was more of a branch than a stick
Of course, eventually, there has to be a reward for selflessly letting passengers get the best pictures, so a few short weeks later it was back to Addo, this time my only company being my camera, binoculars and phone, the latter an essential piece of equipment which alerts me to sightings through an Addo Whatsapp group.
On this occasion, being a member of the group reaped rewards, my phone pinged alerting me to the fact the Addo lions were nearby, so I zoomed off towards Arizona on what has to be the worst road in the park.
I didn’t have to search for the lions – the large number of cars parked by the rangers houses were a clear indication that something was happening. My trusty binoculars quickly pinpointed three lionesses enjoy an al fresco meal of freshly caught kill.
While they were around 700 metres away, my new lens allowed me to get some great shots – and the quality of my camera is so good that I could crop the pictures really close without losing any of the quality.
Earlier that month I did not have to rely on the cropping ability of my camera - we (our overseas guests, Donna and myself), had encountered all five of Addo’s lions close up, although on that occasion we were on the Schotia side of the fence, the lions being just one of many incredible sightings during an unforgettable overnight stay at this pocket-pleasing game reserve.
The thrill of seeing lions in the wild never gets old - and now there’s two new lionesses in Addo, beautiful animals which were released into the park at the beginning of this month - there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I will be back in Addo soon in search of the new additions to the park.
Will my young Addo enthusiast join me? Having shown her my lion pictures, plus pictures of the new arrivals, there is no doubt that she will. Whether we see them or not really doesn’t matter, whatever Addo throws at us is a real thrill, not only for her but, of course, also for me.
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