Tembe Lodge

Report by Sally and Paul Bartho

17 to 20 July 2018

Celebrating our anniversary we decided to splash out and stay three nights at Tembe Lodge.

The lodge is run by the local community and more friendly and helpful staff would be very hard to find elsewhere in Africa.

The stay includes 2 game drives a day, early breakfast, big breakfast, lunch and dinner. The accommodation was a spotless safari tent well furnished with its own ablutions including an outdoor shower. It is well private from other residents and surrounded by African bush.

The day we arrived we went on a game drive and had a number of close encounters with “friendly” elephants. The evening was exceptionally cold and we were happy to get back to camp.

After that experience we decided to give the game drives a miss until the weather warmed up a bit. And that was not such a bad idea as there was little the others on our vehicle actually saw on their other drives. However they did have one encounter with a not so “friendly” elephant. Loads of posturing, blowing its trumpet and shaking up the dust. Back off, forward again and eventually the elephant had had enough. It ripped the tracker seat right off the vehicle as if it were swatting a fly. Our birding was a lot more tranquil!!

Our time was spend travelling round the park in our own vehicle – stopping where we wanted to and spending time with bird parties – the game drives were more focused on the big 5.

During the time we were there we identified 82 species – which was a lot more than we expected. Among them were: Rudd’s Apalis, Woodward’s Batis, African Broadbill, Gorgeous, Grey-headed and Orange-breasted Bushshrikes, Brown Snake Eagle, Crowned Eagle, Southern Banded Snake-Eagle, African Harrier-Hawk, Fiery-necked Nightjar, Spotted and Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl to name a few. Many were identified by their call. Click here to view our list.

Here are some of the photos taken.