May 18, 2012: Swaziland

Greetings All,
After leaving Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Reserve we headed north to the tiny kingdom of Swaziland to visit Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary and take in a bit of Swazi culture. We stayed in a traditional beehive hut and the Nyala paid us a visit (photo 1).

That night the local staff sang and danced for us with a lot of high kicking (photo 2).

The sanctuary has a good variety of antelope including this Blesbok (photo 3).

Since there are no "dangerous" animals at Mlilwane you are free to walk or in our case mountain bike. We biked through an enclosure for Roan Antelope. These antelope became extinct in Swaziland and now the Sanctuary has a project to reintroduce them to the country. We arrived at feeding time and a herd of 20 approached the gate to check us out (photo 4).

We left Swaziland a couple of days ago and continued our drive North back into South Africa and Kruger National Park. Stay tuned for some of our adventures in Kruger.

We hope all is well back home.
Peggy and Marc

April 26, 2012: Bucky Escapes

Hi All,
Today we were just finishing checking the waterhole pumps when we got a call from Howard. Bucky, the pet Nyala had escaped (no, we didn't let her out). He wanted to know if anyone wanted to go with him in his helicopter to fetch a dart gun and drugs from the local vet. We drew sticks and I got the longest one so
Marc and I got to join Howard (photo 1).

We met the vet on a neighboring farm, set the chopper down and picked up the gun and drugs. We returned to the air strip then piled into the back of Howard's land rover to find Bucky who had wandered into a nearby village. We located her literally in the village next to a house (photo 2).

Howard darted her and his workers lifted her to the back of the truck. I keep the blindfold on so she wouldn't get too stressed out (photo 3).

We drove back to the farm where Bucky was given a reversal drug (photo 4).

She almost immediately got up on wobbly legs (photo 5). I think Bucky learned an important lesson today. The grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

I threw in a few misc. photos. The first is Howard's lion (photo 6) and the second is a Bat-eared Fox (photo 7) we saw today while checking the waterhole pumps.

We hope Spring has sprung in Vermont.
Marc and Peggy