Best wishes for 2012

Trails Guiding in Zululand!

Zululand is without a doubt the most beautiful region of South Africa, and there is no purer way to experience its beauty than to explore it on foot. This is life as it is was once meant to be: No electricity, no watches and mobile phones, cooking simple food over a camp fire, sleeping under the stars or in a tent, be on nightwatch guarding the camp against dangerous animals whilst the others sleep. And then in the morning searching for lions, elephants, buffalo, rhino etc. with nothing but a rifle in your hand and a backpack with some food and water on your back. 'Pondering' can literally be lethal here, you've got to be in the 'now', relaxed but concentrated, in a heightened state of awareness, taking nature's beauty in using all your senses, loving it. Finding tracks, interpret those and then follow them. There is no more intense feel of accomplishment than finding that rhino after you've been tracking it for hours. There is nothing more exciting than to lead the trail, being fully responsible for the safety of the others in your group, seeing an elephant enter thick vegetation in riverine forest, and then decide to follow it, try to track it and catch up with it so you can watch it from 50 meters away without the elephant noticing you and your group.

   The safari guide of Tailor Made Safaris joined the students of Bhejane Nature Training on their trails guiding course, to help out the senior instructor, and to get more experience and learn more. Below a small photo essay:

  

Sunset over iBandla Trails Guide Camp

Close up of the camp, screw the buildings, we slept in the tents

Walking hills

Crossing rivers

Looking out for dangerous game

The senior instructor Dylan Panos from Bhejane Nature Training, a legend, armed to the teeth, not only with weapons, but also with a wealth of experience and knowledge. Man, this guy knows how to track animals and interpret tracks!

This is what it is all about, finding elephant, watching them without them knowing you are there.

A big tusker mud bathing

Viewing a white rhino cow and calf from 25 meters away

This impala was killed just minutes before we arrived (it was still warm). The lioness must have noticed us coming and vanished. Note the bite marks in the neck. The next morning we checked again and luckily the lioness had returned and took away her kill to eat.

But on trail you also admire the smaller things such as tortoises

and chameleons

And how awesome is this?

What a most awesome week! And tomorrow Tailor Made Safaris embarks again on a private safari for two persons. The planning: Hluhluwe-iMfolozi, Kosi Bay, swimming with wild dolphins in Mozambique, Tembe Elephant Park, Mkuze Falls 5 star lodge, and Swaziland. 

We still do have some availability for 2012, so don't wait too long, email us and let us take you on the safari of a lifetime! 

Tailor Made Safaris, going the extra mile!

A successful Northern South Africa Tour!

Tailor Made Safaris has just completed a very exciting and successful Cape Town + Northern South Africa Tour with 6 returning guests!

The program: 5 days Cape Town, 2 days Blyde River Canyon, 6 days Kruger, 2 days Soutpansberg, 3 days Pilanesberg.

The Big-5 score: Lions 6 times, leopard 2 times, elephants, rhinos and buffalo all dozens of times. 

Other highlights: Secretary birds and plenty of other raptors, the southern ground hornbill, honey badger, jackals, mongooses, monkeys, hyaenas, great white sharks, humpback whales and southern right whales, penguins, Table Mountain, wine, and plenty of other things. 

Tailor Made Safaris breakfast with a view! 

Fresh buffalo kill on walking safari

Keen photographers 

Rhino tracking

View in the Soutpansberg

Enjoying some beers together!

Tailor Made Safaris. Going the extra mile!

What we do in our 'free time'...

Any business owner knows that free time doesn't exist for them, but yet sometimes we find that helping out with some research project is a good excuse to abandon the marketing, making quotes, doing admin, making bookings, guiding, studying, be on tour, teach etc. So hence the one day Freya joined a friend of ours for an aerial crocodile count in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, and the other day I joined him in the field to catch a monster croc for his research. See some photos below (click on them for an enlargement):

St. Lucia Estuary

Various antelope and zebra along a water course

Large group of hippos

Hippo running in the shallow water

Lake Bhangazi in foreground, Indian ocean in background

Our coastline

Humpback whales along our coast line

Dragging the Bull of Tewate out of the water

It doesn't like me blindfolding him

Covering the eyes while the back legs are tied

Sliding through the rope for tying the front legs

It tries to escape again, hold on tight! Take those blood samples quickly!

Patching up the croc with some disinfectant after having taken skin and blood samples

Just under 4.2 meters and about 400 kg. a last photo before we released him again

Sardine Run 2011

Each year during May through July, a cold northerly current causes millions of sardines to gather in shoals and move north. Visible by satellite, the shoals measuring more than seven kilometres long, 1.5 kilometres wide and 30 meters deep, run up the East coast of South Africa. While doing so, the silvery, swirling swarm becomes fodder for those higher up the food chain. Pursued relentlessly by thousands upon thousands of dolphins, sharks, seals, penguins, whales and gannets, these creatures' feeding frenzy spawns the greatest faunal event on earth. As many as 23000 bottlenose and common dolphins expertly herd the sardines towards shallow waters where the little fish from massive bait balls measuring up to 20 meters in diameter. Super-pods of dolphins, whales and sharks sweep through these balls, gorging on mouthfuls of fish, while voracious seabirds plummet from the skies above like fighter planes, scooping out their victims with ease. As if that wasn't enough, this years sardines had an additional enemy to deal with: A little boat named The Pearl, with three pirates (the crew of Tailor Made Safaris) with three fishing rods...

Okay, as you can see, the annual sardine run is quite a spectacle, and we were dead keen to go and experience it. However, driving to the sardine run Mecca, Port St. Johns, some 660 km South of St. Lucia is do-able, but paying 30.000 rand each for a week long diving charter isn't... Our good friend Charl came up with a master plan: We would drive down, towing his boat, and go out at sea ourselves! In the meantime we would fish like hell, and the caught fish would be used as bait for Charl's charters for the rest of the year. This way we could make some money to cover a part of the cost of going down to Port St. Johns for a week. Excellent, so here we went (click on the photos for an enlargement):

Got our fishing permits, and off we go!

Port St. Johns lies on the beautiful Wild Coast

The local Xhosa people are cute

and hard working

Every morning we would get up before sunrise, to check the conditions of the sea.

Then we would drive down the river towards the sea.

Launching here is dancing with death, but certainly do-able, according to our experienced skipper Charl

Once out at sea, we got to see humpback whales

and southern right whales

and thousands of gannets plummeting out of the air

and hundreds of dolphins, everywhere you would look!

Freya got to snorkel with them

and took some lovely underwater shots

We found a loggerhead turtle as well

so Freya snorkelled with him too.

I was busy taking photos

of flying gannets

and floating gannets

and floating white-chinned petrels

Then it was time for some action shots: Fighter Plane incoming!

Fighter Jet 3 is late...

And Charl? He was fishing...

In the afternoon we would bask in the sun, eating noodle soup and drinking hot chocolate with Amarula.

At the end of the week we travelled North, to Scottsburgh where the people were netting the sardines from the beach: One big catching frenzy, and people stealing each others fish.

People even casting their net into the bigger net of other people.

And then running for your life with your stolen fish in a plastic bag

The commercial operators were unfazed though, they diligently filled their crates while others stole fish through their nets.

And since our fishing didn't quite deliver a years supply of bait for Charl's fishing charters, we bought 4 crates of sardines right from the beach. Happy days!