Sunrise Australia - Filming on Makutsi

In early November we were fortunate to welcome the Sunrise Australia Weather Team to Makutsi! They were on a week-long trip through South Africa, and every evening would do a live broadcast to Australia (with the 11 hour time difference, the evening in SA was the next morning in Australia). The presenter, Sam Mac, would give a live weather broadcast every half hour (a total of 7 broadcasts), presenting the weather, as well as footage that was filmed during that day.

It was an absolute pleasure to see how well-oiled and professional this team was, and what they managed to put together in such a short time. For the live broadcasts, we decided to take Makutsi Tented Camp as our location, and we also invited all of our 60 guests at Makutsi to come over for a few drinks, watch part of the show, and enjoy this special experience.

We were very lucky to get some good footage on our afternoon drive, and the combination of this footage, the guests and staff around the fire, as well as the very funny Sam Mac, made for a great spectacle.

For those of you who have not seen the clips online, here are the links. Some interviews, some footage, always fun...well worth a look.

20h30 Makutsi / 05h30 Australia

21h00 Makutsi / 06h00 Australia

21h30 Makutsi / 06h30 Australia

22h00 Makutsi / 07h00 Australia

22h30 Makutsi / 07h30 Australia

23h00 Makutsi / 08h00 Australia

23h30 Makutsi / 08h30 Australia

Thomas Dietz - My favourite safari experience

One day we were on a game drive (Hatari) with Bethuel as our guide. After a while we, well, actually he, found a group of young lions trying to chase a buffalo. We had the chance to watch the spectacle for a while and whenever the lions came too close, the buffalo just had to turn his head in their direction to make them back up and run away.

Unfortunately we did not have the chance to see how it finally ended up, but Bethuel was sure that the lions would not be able succeed, because they were too inexperienced. That was one of the countless wonderful moments we experienced during our visit.

Looking forward to seeing you in Jan 2020.

Kind regards
Thomas

Uschi Galley - My favourite safari experience

Dear Weber Family,

We are now back home and would like to thank you once again for the wonderful time on Makutsi. We would like to send you some pictures. In particular, the Cheetah Research with Daniel was a unique experience, as we were able to observe the two cheetah females in a successful hunt.

Best regards and hopefully see you soon

Ursula and Hans Peter Galley

Please remember to send us your favourite stories & images of your time at Makutsi, so that we can share them with our readers!

"Thank you" from the Holy Family Care Center

With the help of many of our wonderful guests, we continue to collect different items such as clothes, school supplies etc. Every few months, we assess what and how much has been collected, and then donate these items to one of the schools or orphanages we support.

The Holy Family Care Center is one of them, and we recently received a very nice letter from Sister Sally, who is in charge of the orphanage, with photos to say thanks to the guests.

Thank you again to all of you who have donated items at the Makutsi Reception!

The seasons of Facebook 2018

We have a very loyal following on our Facebook Page, and we enjoy sharing nice images and stories with them about once a week. We do not believe in "bombarding" you with too many images all the time, but a friendly little reminder once a week to make sure you don't forget about us :)

The beauty of Facebook is the fact that we only share current photos, so the images we share with you are at maximum a few days old. This allows our followers and visitors to get a very real idea of what things are looking like at that specific time of year...how is the vegetation in March, is it dry or lush in August...by comparing the images with the date of the post, you can get a very accurate and real-time "painting" of our area.

To illustrate this point, we have looked at all our 2018 Facebook images, and have chosen an example for every month...

Many of you might have seen these images before, but nothing makes you want to come back more than some nice photos, so I hope this tactic will work again :)

Beautiful rains

Lastly, to end this Newsletter on the most positive note possible, we are happy to report that over the last few days Makutsi has enjoyed over 100mm of wonderful rain!

All the dams are full, the river is flowing and we can hear the grass growing once again :) Nothing makes us happier than knowing that we should have enough food and water to get through our next dry season. So we are sleeping very well at the moment!