Jonty Rawlings gives us an account of a recent four-day Palarangala Wilderness Walk.

DAY 1

The guests arrived in camp at about 15:30 so after our introduction and a quick drink we set out in the vehicle for Palarangala.  As there was not a lot of time, we decided to go for a short bush walk around the Palarangala camp.  We had an awesome sighting of a huge male giraffe and some baboons nearby.  Just before we got back into camp, we noticed 3 giraffe about 40m away from us, so we sat in the shade and watched them until it started to get a bit dark.

DAY 2

We woke at about 05:30 and left camp after breakfast at about 06:45.   I decided to head towards Ntomeni Camp, close to the Kruger Park fence. About  1km after the waterhole next to “Poachers Tree” we were viewing some impala at about 25m when the ranger quietly alerted us to 2 huge male lions, 20m ahead of us.  The impala scattered and the first lion ran into the bush. The bigger of the two stayed, shook his head at us and gave us a loud growl.  Then he turned away and followed his brother, luckily.  The rest of the walk was good, with sightings of a variety of antelope species before relaxing under some Mopani trees next to a waterhole for lunch.  We got back to camp at 15:30, 22km later.

DAY 3

We headed off the same time as the previous day and followed the Palarangala river  / riverbed to the confluence of the Machampane and Palarangala, then followed the Machampane South / South West or downstream before finally cutting across the Mopani veld back to camp.  About 3 hours in we crossed the path of a lone bull elephant and viewed him for about 30 minutes.  He did not seem to be bothered by our presence because we kept our distance.   We saw a range of animals along the river including many zebra, wildebeest, impala, waterbuck, kudu, duiker, steenbok and baboons. We stopped for lunch overlooking a nice pool with many birds, and sat in the shade of a Leadwood because  it was 35C or more.   I was wary because I had seen some fresh buffalo dung in the area.  After lunch, we carried on up the river for another 2 kilometres seeing another 4 giraffe and 2 Nyala. Then we turned back to camp, which was about 6km away through the Mopani veld, and it was getting very hot and sweaty.  Suddenly we came across a herd of buffalo, at least 100 if not more.  They picked up our scent and stampeded away, giving us an awesome sighting as we watched the dust clouds rise above the trees and heard the thunderous hooves.  We got back to camp at about 16:30 after a good day’s walk of 23.5km.

DAY 4

We woke early again to the sound of Crested Francolin’s outside our tent and headed off for a short 1 hour walk before breakfast.  We found some lion tracks close to camp from the previous night and some impala.   After breakfast, I dropped the happy guests at Massinger.

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