Johannesburg to Djuma Game Reserve, S. Africa 16 - 18 Mar 08

The Big Five

16 March 2008. Lanseria to Djuma (IFR 1:51). The departure weather was as bad as it was forecast to be: clouds broken 400 feet, visibility 3 km, gusty winds out of the east. Fortunately near Skukuza where we had planned to make our NDB approach to get below the clouds, the ceiling was better: clouds broken 2000 feet and the visibility improved to 4 - 6 km. While on the initial approach to Skukuza NDB (not operating, used GPS fix) at the minimum sector altitude of 4500 feet, we discovered a big hole in the cloud cover, cancelled IFR and descended below the cloud cover, which saved us quite some time. The wind at Hoedspruit was 170 at 20 knots, which made the landing on the relatively narrow runway 11 in Djuma quite challenging. We first made a low pass to check for game, made a circuit and then made a second approach. A lot of crab angle was required to compensate for more than 15 knots of crosswind, and there were tall trees on both sides, which created a lot of eddies and a sudden change of the crosswind component as we descended below the treetops to land, requiring a number of quick changes of attitude in the middle of the flare. Quite stressful, but Flemming managed nevertheless to make quite a decent landing and Angela heaved a sigh of relief.
Although we had called the lodge beforehand on the Iridium phone with our ETA, we were surprised that nobody was there to pick us up, so we called them again. It turned out that the Djuma Bush Camp was no longer using the Djuma strip but the Arathusa Safari Lodge strip nearby, and our driver Andrew was waiting for us there. However, it only took him 15 minutes to drive to the Djuma strip. The lodge also contacted the owner of the Djuma strip, and we were told that we could leave our plane there. We arrived back at the Djuma Bush Camp just in time for lunch.
We went for a late afternoon game drive and were lucky to see a couple of rhinos (mother and baby) as well as a hippo, kudus, vervet monkeys, impalas, wildebeest and a giant eagle owl. It wasn’t an easy job for Andrew as the grass was high and animals were hard to see.

At dinner one of the waitresses was called Nesta, the first time I had come across that name since my grandmother, who was also called Nesta. Thus I discovered that Nesta is a South African name, which makes sense since her mother (Ina Florence Currie) was South African.