Ade’s diary – July 2007

The winter has definitely arrived at Nitani and it is always so hard to imagine the usual hot temperatures that prevail for most of the year are not just a dream. Animals and people alike all find the first rays of the sun and thaw.

Our animal friends are all doing very well. Impi, our hand reared serval, is free and wild and we would love to have any pictures taken by our guests that met him (please contact us should you have shared the Nitani experience with us, and have images of Impi). We have discovered that of all the many pictures we have of him, there are none of him and Shane together (the reason being - of course - that I must be the world’s worst photographer). So any pictures that could be e-mailed to our reservations office would be greatly appreciated.

Arni, the hand reared bushbuck, has come of age and has made his debut into the wild. We have every confidence that he will survive and succeed most admirably and will post an update as soon as we have news. At present he his wondering between our camp and the lodge, so there are many eyes to watch out for his progress.

Our animal sightings at this time of the year are always very good and we have been seeing a great deal of leopards in the last few weeks. We were privileged enough to come across what we called a pride of leopards, five in total comprising a female, her three fully grown cubs and a young male. Last night’s game drive produced a young female leopard with a sizable baboon she had killed and wedged into the fork of a tree. She was obviously very proud of herself and we managed to get some very nice photographs of her. Victoria, our collared female leopard has been in a bad scrap and has lost the tip of her tail which is quite tragic as she had a beautiful sensual tail. We do have a young male leopard with a short tail which doesn’t appear to be at all disadvantaged by it.

We have a new resident at our camp. A Cape clawless otter who has staked a claim to the river below us. We haven’t seen otters in years so this is very exciting. We watched something very interesting the other evening, we were alerted to some very strange growling sounds and saw the otter amble down the riverbank into the water. A few seconds later, Pula (our resident leopard) followed and the two had a growling competition - with the otter giving as good as he was getting! The otter finally swam off and Pula had to make alternative dinner plans.

Nitani has other great news, the Shashe/Limpopo Transfrontier Park agreement was successfully signed on the 22 nd June between the Tourism Ministers of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. This will make Nitani part of a 4780 square kilometer “big five” wildlife sanctuary. While Nitani still remains private land the animals will move freely and our guests will benefit greatly by this. Our area is heralded to become one of the most unique wildlife experience in Africa.