Rarity is richness…

Where would you find an African civet, a common duiker, a pack of wild dogs, lions feeding on an elephant carcase and a woman called Miles? Well, you’d have to go to Arathusa Safari Lodge in South Africa—as I did a couple of weeks ago.

After Muchenje Safari Lodge and Kambaku River Lodge, Arathusa was the third place I visited in my whistle-stop tour of southern Africa. I booked a road transfer there and stayed from 3 to 10 June before moving on to Simbavati River Lodge and Kings Camp.

Here’s a summary of the lodge, the daily routine and the wildlife sightings I had while I was there.

The Lodge

I’d never been to the lodge before, and my first question was why it was called Arathusa. Normally, safari lodges choose a name from the local language, so a misspelt reference to the Arcadian nymph who fled from the river god Alpheus and ended up being transformed by Artemis into an underwater stream was surprising, to say the least!

Unfortunately, none of the staff knew the origins of the name, but the lodge itself was very impressive. It comprised a large collection of buildings on the banks of a dammed lake in a private concession (or conservancy) adjoining Kruger National Park. On the far side of the water, you could almost always see wildlife—either impala, Cape buffalo, southern giraffe, common waterbucks or African elephants.

The main area consisted of three parts: an indoor dining room, an outdoor dining room and a bar. Nothing was really indoors or outdoors, though. The indoor places didn’t have any walls (unless you count the canvas sheets you could pull down), and the outdoor areas all had roofs.

The guest rooms were brick-built cottages split into those with lake views and bush views. I was in a bush view room at the very edge of the property. In fact, it was so far away that my tracker had to pick me up and drop me off in his truck!

There was no Wi-Fi, but my room came with a pool, a deck, a British power socket, a bath and indoor and outdoor showers! Of course, I never had time to take advantage of the pool, the bath or the showers—I was too busy going on game drives and rating my pictures on my laptop…

One of my favourite things about visiting Africa is the attitude of the staff. They’re all so friendly and helpful that the word ‘no’ doesn’t seem to exist in their vocabulary! Arathusa was no exception, and all the staff knew my name and used it as often as they could!

Things did occasionally go wrong, but it was usually down to what I’d call benign forgetfulness. The left hand didn’t always know what the right hand was doing, and if I complained about the lack of juice or something, one of the staff would thank me for pointing it out rather than argue about it or get defensive. It certainly made a change from trying to wrestle with customer service back in London…!

Daily routine

The daily routine was similar at virtually all the South African camps I visited, but this was the Arathusa version:

0530 Wake-up call
0600-0900 Morning game drive with Mike and Eugene
0915-1015 Breakfast by the lake
1045-1145 Bush walk with Mike (optional)
1400-1500 Lunch by the lake
1500-1530 High tea in the bar
1530-1830 Afternoon game drive with Mike and Eugene
1915-2045 Dinner (either by the lake or indoors if it was too windy)

You’ll notice that the schedule included four meals a day and that high tea followed immediately after lunch! This was a great source of amusement amongst the guests, and the amount of food we were asked to put away was astonishing. I had to miss dinner a few times just to keep my daily calorie count below 10,000…!

The only problem with the dining arrangements was that all the guests were segregated by vehicle. You had to sit with the people who went with you on game drives, and you couldn’t socialise with anybody else. I don’t really understand why, and it was a great shame. I always enjoy getting to know the other guests on safari, and breaking bread together is an important part of the process.

One of the good things about the daily routine is that it gave me plenty of time to work on my pictures in between game drives. In fact, I took my cameras with me to breakfast so that I could take photos during the day.

There were quite a few times when there was an opportunity to get great wildlife sightings from the deck beside the lake. Plenty of big animals came down to the lake to drink, such as elephants, giraffes and buffaloes, and we often saw a baby hippo with a broken leg that had been abandoned by its mother. All the guests wondered if she’d ever come back, but she did eventually, and someone even saw the baby on its mother’s back!

In addition, there were often Cape starlings, African hoopoes and other birds perched in the trees or looking for grubs in the grass, and I even saw one of the American guests sitting on the lawn posing for selfies with a nyala!

Wildlife Sightings

This was my first trip to South Africa on safari, so it was interesting to spot all the differences and similarities with the other countries I’d visited, including Botswana, Namibia, Kenya and Tanzania.

First of all, Arathusa was in a private concession, which meant that the vehicles could go off-road—unlike in Kruger National Park. That’s a huge advantage in South Africa, where there are so many trees that spotting and photographic animals can be a real problem. Most lodges deal with the issue by employing a tracker who sits on the ‘jumpseat’ on the bonnet, looks out for animal scat and spoor and sometimes climbs down to follow the trail on foot wherever it leads.

In addition, the vehicles were slightly different. They were still Toyota LandCruisers, which have just about replaced Land Rover Defenders at safari lodges these days, but they were entirely open, with no windows, door jambs or windscreens. That meant great visibility—although I sometimes couldn’t see much straight ahead with Eugene in the tracker seat!

I sat in the front for all but one of the game drives because the passenger seat was a bit lower than the rear benches. That meant I could get a slightly lower angle while taking pictures.

There was a convenient pocket for my iPhone, space between the front seats for my 70-300mm lens and a cup holder for my water —which wasn’t the annoying thermos flask you usually have to fill up and lug around but an actual glass bottle that was given to me just before each game drive. I don’t get very thirsty on game drives and don’t like drinking plain water, so I just left it in the cup holder most days.

Another difference is the way the guides talk about wildlife sightings in South Africa. In most other countries, they communicate in the local tribal language (such as Setswana or Maa), so guests usually don’t have a hope of working out what they’re talking about.

However, South African guides often speak in English, which would normally mean guests could work out what they were due to see unless they did something about it. And so they decided to keep guests in the dark by referring to the animals in the local language of Shangaan.

Hence, you never hear the English names of the Big Five. Instead, you need to learn the local names:

Nyarhi - buffalo
Ndlovu - elephant
Nkombi - white rhino
Ubejane - black rhino
Ngala - lion
Nkwe - leopard

The idea is to prevent the guests from getting too excitable and pestering their guides all the time, but whatever the reasoning, it’s pretty easy to work out what’s going on once you know the system.

Another difference between South Africa and other safari destinations is the number of sightings and what you tend to see. Sightings are very rare due to the heavy undergrowth and the number of bushes and trees, but you do quite often see the Big Five or the Magnificent Seven (with the addition of the cheetah and wild dog).

Your basic choice is between quantity and quality. Yes, there might not be a single moment on a game drive in Botswana or Kenya when you can’t see at least one animal or bird, but if you want lions, leopards, rhinos, cheetahs or wild dogs, you’d probably be better off in South Africa—even if you’ll only get a couple of sightings an hour!

My own experience at Arathusa matched what I’ve just described. There were long periods when I’d be driving around without an animal or bird in sight, so I’d just read the paper on my iPhone or chat to Mike or the other guests.

However, I ended up getting three rhino, 11 lion and 12 leopard sightings in a week—plus a great view of a pack of wild dogs hunting a blue wildebeest at dawn! When we saw male and female lions feeding on an elephant carcase, I was blown away. I’d never seen that before. We also came across a pride of lions feeding on a kill, a lion cub gnawing on a zebra and a close-up of a leopard lying in a tree. Happy days…!

The main problem with game viewing in South Africa is that almost all the rhinos have been dehorned. I didn’t realise that before I went there, and I was desperately disappointed. I like to celebrate the power, beauty, humour and cuteness of wildlife, but seeing mutilated rhinos was horrific. I couldn’t even look at them, let alone take pictures.

Verdict

I always like spending a reasonably long period of time at a game lodge. Most guests only stay for two or three nights, and it’s a shame when you have to say goodbye to people all the time.

Staying at Arathusa for a whole week allowed me to get a pretty good feel for the place, the people and the wildlife. It had been recommended to me by someone I’d met at Muchenje, and it was a good call.

The facilities were excellent and the staff was reliably friendly and eager to help. The food and drink were plentiful, and I was lucky enough to get some unique sightings. They didn’t come around very often, but it was worth the wait to ‘fill in the gaps’. I’d certainly never have seen so many cats and dogs if my flight home from Botswana hadn’t been cancelled!

Species List

Animals

African bush elephant

African civet

Banded mongoose

Black-backed jackal

Black-necked chameleon

Blue wildebeest

Cape buffalo

Common duiker

Common impala

Common waterbuck

Dwarf mongoose

Flap-necked chameleon

Freshwater/marsh terrapin

Greater kudu

Hippo

Leopard

Lion

Nile monitor

Nyala

Olive toad

Plains zebra

Slender mongoose

Southern giraffe

Spotted hyena

Tree squirrel

Vervet monkey

Wild dogs

Birds

African fish eagle

African hoopoe

African jacana

Bateleur/Short-tailed eagle

Blacksmith lapwing

Brown-hooded kingfisher

Brown parrot

Brown snake-eagle

Burchell’s coucal

Burchell’s starling

Cape starling/Cape glossy starling

Coqui francolin

Crested barbet

Crested francolin

Crowned lapwing

Dark chanting goshawk

Egyptian goose

Fiery-necked nightjar

Fork-tailed drongo

Glossy ibis

Green-backed herons

Grey go-away-bird

Grey heron

Hadada ibis

Hamerkop

Helmeted guineafowl

Hooded vulture

Lilac-breasted roller

Little bee-eater

Magpie shrike

Natal spurfowl

Red-billed buffalo weaver

Red-billed oxpecker

Ring-necked dove

Saddle-billed stork

Southern ground hornbill

Southern red-billed hornbill

Southern yellow-billed hornbill

Three-banded plover

White-backed vulture

Yellow-billed oxpecker

If you’d like to order a framed print of one of my wildlife photographs, please visit the Prints page.

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