Monthly Archives: July 2013

Golden Gate Highlands National Park, July 2013

Golden Gate Highlands National Park is one of our favourite destinations, as many of you will already know (because we tell you that so regularly ;-)). Our last visit there was in December and we were starting to really miss the spectacular mountain scenery, so we decided on the spur of the moment to pay Golden Gate a quick weekend visit last week.

Mountain stream

Lichens Pass snaking its way up into the mountains

Golden Gate Dam

Resting in peace at the foot of the Golden Gate

Mushroom Rocks

One of the self-catering chalets at the Golden Gate Hotel, operated by SANParks, would be our accommodations for the night. Our well-appointed unit had a unobstructed view of the iconic Brandwag buttress, which is illuminated at night.

Golden Gate Chalet

A room with a view

Brandwag illuminated at night

Another view of Brandwag

The Golden Gate Hotel

Birdlife abounds around the chalets at the Golden Gate Hotel

The vulture hide is a very welcome recent addition to the Park’s facilities and we had a fantastic sighting of jackal / vulture interaction there on the Saturday afternoon – have a look at our “Bowling for Buzzards” post for pictures from that episode.

The Cape Griffon is an endangered species

The vulture “restaurant” has a stunning view!

Black-backed jackal

Setting out at first light on Sunday morning it was clear that winter had a firm hold on this mountainous landscape. At the top of Lichens Pass our temperature gauge was showing 5 degrees below freezing at 07:00am! Despite the bitter cold we were able to enjoy a couple of good game sightings and beautiful scenery.

Zebra sunrise

Plains zebra

A herd of blesbok making their way through the frosty landscape

Sunrise over the Eastern Free State

Black wildebeest

After a leisurely picnic lunch beneath a protea-bush in the Basotho Village, we had to head for home. One night simply wasn’t enough, and we will be returning soon!

Beautiful mountain vistas at the eastern entrance to Golden Gate Highlands National Park

The Golden Gate Highlands National Park will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in September this year, and to mark the event SANParks is offering a half-price promotion – have a look if you also need to escape to the mountains in a hurry!

Masterpiece

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Nature’s beauty is unrivaled.

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We’ve posted this picture, taken near Crocodile Bridge in the Kruger National Park earlier this year, before, but couldn’t resist posting it again in response to this week’s photo challenge.

Bowling for Buzzards!

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This afternoon, watching from the hide at the Golden Gate vulture restaurant*, I was treated to one of the most entertaining sequences of animal interaction I have ever experienced!

A pair of black-backed jackals were protecting the last scraps of a carcass with everything they had against a group of Cape griffons.

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I couldn’t help but think of the “bowling for buzzards” scene in the animated Disney movie “The Lion King” where meerkat Timon and warthog Pumbaa save little Simba by rushing into the huddle of vultures surrounding the lion cub!

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A “Vulture Restaurant” is a feeding station where carcasses are made available for vultures in safe places to mitigate the risk of them feeding on poisoned carcasses elsewhere.

Fresh

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Fresh mountain water and crisp mountain air on a sunny, but windy, winters day… We’re spending the weekend in the beautiful Golden Gate Highlands National Park, in the eastern Free State Province of South Africa.

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“Fresh” is this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge

The Golden Hour

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Not only is the first and last hours of daylight – the “Golden Hours” – the best for photography, but it is also the best time to be out searching for the big cats in South Africa’s wild places, like this leopard we encountered near Cape Vidal, in the iSimangaliso Wetland Park.

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“The Golden Hour” is the current weekly photo challenge from WordPress

Nostalgic: The Selati Line

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Crocodile Bridge

On the 8^th of November 1912 a railway line connecting the border town of Komatipoort with the gold fields at Tzaneen in the north-western Lowveld of South Africa, cutting across the Sabie Game Reserve for a distance of approximately eighty kilometres, was inaugurated. Known as the Selati Line, it played an immense part in the history of the Kruger National Park.

The railway bridge over the Sabie River, seen from Skukuza Rest Camp

In 1923 the South African Railways introduced a nine day train tour through the Lowveld, incorporating the “Reserve” halt at Sabie Bridge on the Selati Line, where the train would park for one night and depart again an hour after sunrise. The stopover in the game reserve quickly became the highlight of the tours (which also included the beaches and night clubs of Lourenco Marques in Portuguese East Africa (today Maputo, Mozambique)), swinging public opinion in favour of the protection of the reserve and its subsequent proclamation as South Africa’s first National Park in 1926.

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Construction of a new railway line running around the borders of the Park commenced in the late sixties, as the number of trains passing through the Park – up to 250 a week – was causing a huge number of animals to be maimed and killed on the tracks. The last train steamed through “Reserve” siding in September 1973.

Skukuza station

Today, Sabie Bridge is called Skukuza, the Kruger National Park’s headquarters and biggest rest camp. The two metal train bridges across the Crocodile and Sabie rivers stand silent witness to a long departed era of Kruger Park’s history. In 1978 “The Railways” donated steam engine 3638, named “Skukuza”, to the then National Parks Board for permanent display at the replica station inside the camp. Hitched to “Skukuza” are three coaches that today serve as the Selati Restaurant – a unique and nostalgic dining experience in one of the world’s most famous conservation areas.

Steam engine "Skukuza"