After weeks of preparations, Susanne and me are finally an our way to the Kalahari Desert and Hluhluwe Wildlife Reserve in South Africa to photograph wildlife for two weeks. After a visit to the Kalahari in 2005, this is my second visit to the area and in total my fourth in South Africa.
Rather typical to leave now, when southern Sweden is finally covered with 30-40cm of great snow which probably will be melted when we come back. We don’t get this much snow in our area very often and the white cover is very exciting.
Because of all the snow, I checked my winter bird feeder in front of my “Waterworld” hide, yesterday. The hide and the whole forest were covered in deep snow and the water in the pool was of course frozen. Beautiful. And little surprising, the bird feeder in front of the hide was visited by lots of Bramblings, Chaffinches, Great and Blue tits and some other species. I am really looking forward to photograph there when I come back in January.
After having taken a flight from Hamburg this afternoon, we are right now (at around midnight on 23rd December) sitting at the airport in Dubai, waiting to catch our next flight to Johannesburg in four hours. From Johannesburg, we will have to drive for about 10 hours until we reach the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in the Kalahari. The National Park is one of the best areas for watching wildlife in South Africa and we hope to photograph lions, cheetahs, suricates and many other species. It will be exciting to test the new Canon EOS 7D, especially the video function and the possibility to use EF-S lenses which I cannot use with the 1D Mark 3.
We will stay in the Kalahari for about one week, then we will drive to Hluhluwe Wildlife Reserve in the area of greater Durban. This reserve is one of our favorites and we have spent some days there last winter. The wildlife is wonderful, and last year we saw quite a few White Rhinos, African Wild Dogs, Spotted Hyenas and Leopard.
It is going to be a wonderful time and a very “different” christmas. During this trip, I will try to update this blog as often as possible. However, I am not sure how often we will have access to the internet.
Merry christmas to all of you and keep in touch!
/Felix