Tau Lodge and Madikwe: What an adventure

Four hours is a long way to drive but it’s the shortest and most direct route to heaven. Or, well, the bush equivalent of it.

And its premium bush; for no other reason than it is breathtakingly spectacularly amazingly flipping beautiful. If there were space and tolerance for more hyperbole, this page would be full of it.  

Madikwe Game Reserve is situated alongside South Africa’s border with Botswana and Tau Game Lodge, at the very close end to it.

It’s a family-friendly lodge that’s an easy four-hour drive from Joburg, and here, game drives are addictive.

It’s where this story ends and, for good measure, starts. The accommodation and meals make it all the better, but the sightings leave even the most brylcreamed city slickers and device-dependent folk breathless. 

Drink in the bush’s beauty

Here, the sole purpose of a cell phone is to take pictures. But it’s even better to drink it all in, because it’s more than just kyk-daar at Madikwe. You get so close to the wild that you can smell them.

After a few drives, it’s actually possible to smell elephants before you see them. The same with wild dogs and hyenas. It’s just as easy to imagine yourself as a hunter-gatherer a thousand years ago and how spoors and smells and the sounds of the wild could lead you to your carrion or save your behind from danger. 

Probably the worst smell you’ll encounter in the bush is the Matabele ant’s secretions. It reeks of rotting poo. During a few game drives, the pungent aroma hung in the air.

Our incredible game ranger, Thuso, showed us Matabele ants and told us they are like six-legged stink bombs. When they feel threatened, they let rip. Game-drive vehicles feel like such danger, and so the ants respond en masse.

He held up one of these large ants, almost a three quarter inch head to toe, and up close the critter really makes malfunctioning sewage works as fragrant as Parisian lavender. 

There is a point to this. Game viewing at Madikwe is not just about check-listing rhinos, elephants, buffalo and lions – we saw them all – but also learning and experiencing different kinds of things in the bush, like the two dung beetles that struggled to roll a giant ball of lunch down the dirt road. Thuso noticed, slowed down, stopped, and shared. 

Game viewing is about more than check-listing

Thank goodness he didn’t just slow down. He was also very adept at hitting reverse and getting out of a potentially tricky situation.

An elephant viewing nearly became damn scary. Members of the herd were strolling along the two-track as we approached them. What we didn’t know was to our left, hidden in the growth, a calf became separated from its family, and a distress call followed.

Somehow, the vehicle ended up in the middle, and angry big ears started to make good of the nightmares that had played out on social media.

Thuso reversed quickly, opening up space for the young one to get itself back to the herd, and the charger halted. It was quick thinking that saved everyone from a nervous sweat. 

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Experienced rangers don’t just enhance your bush experience; they keep you safe. And you learn at Madikwe. Encounters with the wild aren’t exactly predictable, but when you know what you’re doing, as Thuso clearly does, it’s not Russian roulette, either. 

About twenty minutes later, the same herd was about to cross paths with us again.

This time, Thuso simply pulled to the side of the road, turned off the engine, and the giant animals passed within less than a metre from us.

Needless to say, it was a pants-wetting moment, but nothing happened because, he said, we were there first this time.

It was just the elephant at the back of the pack that glanced in our direction with a slight, though likely imagined, expression of reproach. 

Rare wild dogs a highlight

The wild dogs and hyenas at Madikwe were an absolute highlight. The former was a rarity, and we had the good fortune of seeing them on two consecutive days: the dogs and their pups playing and pranking.

They looked so cute that you’d just want to stretch out and pet them. That is until Thuso shared that when on the hunt, wild dogs start dining on chunks of their prey during the chase.

We also saw some jackals taunt a lonely hyena, nipping at it to bugger off from its young. The hyena then went for a bath and frolicked in a giant muddy puddle.

It’s amazing. We could smell the wild dogs, the scent of the hyenas, and the dusty coats of the pack of jackals. 

Rhinos are stubborn. Donald Trump stubborn. We came upon two males jousting one rainy morning along with a spectating third. And as they moved our way, these giant, gently treading creatures just wouldn’t get out of our way until Thuso turned the vehicle back on.

But, Trump, the rhino, didn’t get out of the road. Hell no. Instead, he ran ahead of us, now in accidental pursuit, for several hundred metres before getting gatvol and heading into the bush.

On the way, we passed a rhino toilet. Apparently, there are spots that these beasts designate for poo, and they stick to these loos.

Rhino sightings are never reported

Rhino sightings at Madikwe, said Thuso, are never reported because you never know who’s listening to the radio. It’s kept off air and you’re lucky to see them, because there’s no network of game rangers that would ever share their position with anyone, unlike other game where keepers share the best sightings.

Animals at Madikwe are abundant, look well fed, and if there was a campfire somewhere, they’d be singing kumbaya.

It’s lush and green, quite a contrast to reports circulating last year that the game stock in the area was under threat due to a drought.

It’s been raining a lot—so much, in fact, that we got stuck in the mud. And it wasn’t just the wheelspin kind of stuck; it was good and proper. So muddy that even the rescue vehicle got stuck, and also had to be rescued. But getting stuck was fun, a helluva lot of fun. Images of the Camel man, the bush-savvy survivor, flickered for a moment. 

Trying to get a large game drive vehicle out of clayish mud was somewhat challenging. Shoes off, mud all over us, we grabbed sticks, rocks, and whatever we could find to create some surface for traction.

We pushed, pushed and pushed. And every now and then yelled as another hidden thorn in the mud stung our feet.

It was enormous fun and better than any workout—the kind of fun that you love in the moment and that ingrains forever memories. Between Thuso and us, it was impossible to tell who was the filthiest. 

When it got dark, and the bush came alive, so did our senses. It was incredible. When the Madikwe ranger cavalry arrived to take us back to camp, we followed with reluctance. Thuso and colleagues stayed to salvage the vehicle. 

Muddy beers are a blessing

Later that night, cleaned up, dinner settled, and beers in hand, Thuso and the crew arrived back. Tales of hyenas circling them while they laboured to unmuddy the stuck vehicle made us feel like we missed out. What we didn’t know while in at the time was that there was a giant elephant bull about fifty metres away from where were stuck. He was also watching the commotion. 

The next morning we saw a cheeky little lion cub with his mom, a lion with an impressive mane trying to mate with a female, who obviously had a headache. It was fascinating to see how he went to sulk on the other side of a shrub when she denied his continued advances. There are no Panados in the wild, unfortunately for him.  

Madikwe offers these kinds of experiences, and they are managed safely by experienced experts.

You get to experience the bush in a raw, in-your-face kind of way. It’s hard to describe; suffice it to say that it’s as much a spiritual experience as it is a relaxing, interesting, incredible one.

The bush is alive, the bush is invigorating, it’s a teacher. And at Madikwe, it’s to be enjoyed to the fullest extent. 

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