My South African Safari ends, alas!

The ibis skull is about 9" long.

I was having a great deal of fun at Panzi Bush Camp.  The folks there have made a collection of skulls and interesting seedpods which I took the opportunity to photograph and sketch.  The Hadeda Ibis was particularly fascinating, and it earned a page in my sketch journal, along with two views of a baboon skull.

Hadeda Ibis and baboon skulls

The African Porcupine has dug a den in this hillock

Bev took me out back and showed me the earthen  bank where the porcupine lives, tunneling into a hillock just behind the kitchen. It sometimes wanders in the back door and into the office to say hi to Glynn, but it didn't happen while I was there. Guess I'll just have to go back and try again....


Five days at Panzi wasn't nearly long enough to sketch and draw everything that caught my interest, although by now I was needing a break from sketch journaling. I think two weeks is about optimum for me if I'm sketching and journaling hours each day.  It can be exhausting (although exciting and exhiliarating ~ go figure!), and by now I was nearing the end of my third week.  

"my" yellow orchids

I spent some time lounging on my little chalet deck gazing dreamily up at the gorgeous yellow orchids growing in the tree above, and lazily sketching a fat skink (a lizard)  that liked to bask in the splashes of sun on the deck railing.

sketching the skink

One morning I rode into Hoedspruit with Glynn and John to shop for souvenirs and exchange some dollars for rands.

There are some really nice shops in Hoedspruit, but I mostly shopped at the outdoor craftsmen's displays, which have a lot more cachet than a modern shop. I bought a couple of charming carved creatures ~ a hornbill, and a hippo in a carved stone pool, from the man in the picture below.  

Craftsmen and their wares on a Hoedspruit roadside.

Nothing lasts forever, and after five wonderful Panzi days of sketching and exploring, bush-walking with Glynn and chatting with Bev and John, it was time to leave.  Glynn drove me into Hoedspruit to catch my shuttle to Johannesburg, where I caught my plane home.  

my plane taxis into its berth

 On the back of the plane seat in front of me was a screen upon which I could watch movies or switch to an airplane's-tail view of the scenery. We took off at about sunset, and chased the moon across the Atlantic, arriving, 17 hours later at dawn, on the east coast of the US. This is the view from the tail of the plane taxiing into the airport at NYC after crossing the Atlantic.   I was home again.

If I'd blogged this last August, I would have waxed poetic and told you some more tales, but I have been working on my South African Sketching Safari sketchbook and tutorial ever since I got home and I am just about waxed out.  
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The cover of the new South African Sketching Safari sketch journal.

The sketchbook and its tutorial is finally finished, and I finally got it uploaded this morning. It took me a couple of days to write the code for the new webpage and make all the connections to other pages on my website and to the server so that you can download your own copy, but now,  TA-DAH!  It is done!  

If you'd like to learn more about what's inside, go here to its page for a closer look, and I hope you'll be tempted to download a copy to see more.  It's more than a hundred pages, and it took me six months to create, so $9.95 is a pretty good deal I think.

My next sketch journal will be done in Saguaro National Park near Tucson.  Watch for it! If you put your name in the alerts box at upper right, you will be notified when I blog about it.  In the meantime, have a happy holiday, and I'll blog again soon.  

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Visiting Moholoholo Rehab Center

Track ID sheet

So far, we had spent our time~
except for our one-day circuit through Kruger National Park in the rental car ~ at Moholoholo Mountain View practicing tracking skills and photographing the beautiful wildlife (are warthogs beautiful? I think so!) ~ .  There was much to learn, much to photograph and sketch, and we all made the most of it in our individual ways. 

baboon tracks

Colin used some remarkable laminated sheets with track illustrations on them to help us identify the various tracks we saw. The sheets pointed out the many things to watch for to assist in identification when looking at tracks. 
The image above shows vervet monkey tracks on the left and baboon tracks on the right, so they can be compared.  So when we ran across these tracks in the dust near the waterhole, it was pretty clear, even though the tracks weren't absolutely perfect, that they had been made by baboons ~ the size being one giveaway.

the viewing platform

I was spending more time, now, sketching busily away as the others perfected their tracking skills.  

Papa warthog comes to drink

The opportunities seemed endless as I watched at the viewing platform for guinea fowl, monkeys, nyalas, francolins (an African quail), mongooses, and other obliging wildlife, who showed up to eat and drink throughout the day.  

Sketching en plein aire

 The warthogs provided endless entertainment as they "hogged" the resources, being at the top of the pecking order. I couldn't get enough of them.  But there were many other sketching opportunities too: 

I found the seedpods intriguing, with their curious attachments to the pods. Their thorny host trees provided endless entertainment as I forever seemed to be shifting into reverse to extract myself from thorns as I pursued fascinating flanged vines (see the image) or camouflaged monkeys).  

a peculiar flanged vine

On August 6th (I think), we visited the Moholoholo Rehab Center where we became acquainted with a young black rhino, invited vultures to land on our arm (enclosed in a heavy leather glove!). 

Joe interviews a black rhino calf

We got to pat a cheetah, and got close-up views of honey badgers, hyenas, lions, a whole array of eagles and vultures, and other animals brought to the center after sustaining injuries or unscheduled separation from their parents.

Cape Wild Dogs are endangered

Johann holds a vulture on his arm

Many of these are returned to the wild after they are mended or rehabbed.  Some, however, can't be returned if they wouldn't be able to sustain themselves, and serve as educational tools for the public.  I was particularly taken with the Bateleur Eagles, who were so calm and friendly that one of them would alight next to a visitor and solicit a neck rub! I took lots of photos of them, and observed for a long while. 

Bateleur Eagle study

But there was no opportunity to sketch during the tour, so this drawing was done a couple of days later when I had more time. 


One of my favorite places to work was on the porch of the cabin Sandy and I shared. It was pleasant most of the day, being on the shady south side of the cabin, and as I drew I was frequently visited by a pair of tree squirrels which lived nearby.

A Tree Squirrel supervises sketches

Wherever I went, I pocketed potential sketching subjects, and by now I had quite a collection. If something couldn't be moved, a knobthorn acacia tree with twining vines, for instance, I would draw it on the spot. Then later, on my porch, I would add drawings of such things as wild cotton pods and a catfish head I found by the pool.   
 
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Okay, that's all I have time for today.  Later on, I will make my sketchbook into a downloadable book which you can buy from my website here.  I hope/think you'll find it very entertaining.