22 July 2005    to      24 July 2005

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Even in winter Tshipise is still quite hot. We had temperatures of around 28 degrees Celcius during the day. Unfortunately its also very dry around here this time of the year. The place is about 500km north of Johannesburg. Even travelling on the highway it takes you about five hours. The road has endless tollgates along the way so it becomes quite expensive. We had a Rondavel for the two nights that we were there.

Lots of Mongoose / Meercats (not sure what this lot is) run around the place scratching in the grass and soil for food. At one stage we saw about forty of them.

Its the first time that we've seen the stripped variety. Normally they have a more brownish colour.

Some of the flowers you get around here.

Friday evening was braai (barbeque) night.

It was not long before we were invaded by a hoard of cats looking for food.

Mommy cat was the first to arrive. After she'd had her fill....

she brought along the family in the form of four kittens. In the end we had about eight cats.

The next day we drove out to the Musina Nature Reserve. Its quite a large reserve of over 4000 hectares. They have a game reserve next to Tshipise but we found out to our annoyance that you cannot walk in the thing and they only have game drives there, so we had to find another place to go walk in the bush. The area north of the Soutpansberg is famous for its huge Baobab trees which we very much wanted to have a closer look at. Its an enormous tree whose girth can get up to 28m! It really looks like its been planted upside down with the roots in the air. It fruit is quite rich in Ascorbic acid and its white powdery interior is used to make a drink reminiscent of lemonade. They reckon a tree with a diameter of 10m is in the region of 2000 years old.

Most of the area we walked in is quite flat with the occasional rocky knoll.

Some more example of Baobab trees.

The bush is criss crossed by animal tracks. At on stage we lost the trail markings and could not for the life of us find them again. Eventually we just bundu bashed back to the main entrance again.

Saturday evening we all celebrated Silvia's birthday (cats included).