It never rains in Africa. Well, almost never. It seemed that a low pressure system had stalled over the Eastern Cape. We spent all of Monday and Tuesday looking for Bush Buck in the rain. Antelope are like deer, they don’t like to move in moderate to heavy rain. We staked out strategic locations on the lush green hillsides and waited for breaks in the rain to see if we could catch one moving. We saw a few dart between the thick foliage during the breaks, but nothing that was worth pursuing.
On Tuesday morning, Murray and I loaded up and headed out to hunt for Caracal. The tracker and dog handler had treed one. As soon as we left, we got a radio call. The cat had jumped from the tree to escape, but unfortunately landed in the pack of dogs. We headed back to the Kat River to continue looking for Bush Buck.
Each night we put our damp clothes around the fire place in the lodge to dry. I managed to catch my wool gloves on fire, my waterproof wool hat shrunk, and my other clothes never really got dry. I had a warm wool sweater with water/windproof lining for my "rain gear". It was not very pleasant to wear in the cold and rain. It never rains in Africa.
We packed-up Wednesday morning and headed to the coast. We would be spending our last two nights at a hotel in Morgan’s Bay, a very small sea side resort on the Indian Ocean. We planned to hunt the coastal range for Bush Buck. It was very different from the Kat River - extremely green, relatively flat, and looked a lot like East Texas before you hit the pines. Except for the river valley. A large river valley ran through the area we were hunting. The relatively flat land gave away to a very deep and wide river valley throw which a large fast flowing river winds and drops with rapids and waterfalls. The valley looked exactly like something out of a Central American rainforest. You could easily have mistaken the area for Costa Rica.
View of Coastal River Valley
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