SOUTH AFRICA: First South African Safari Frontier Safaris

[jimbo1972]

Enjoying this report and following along on your adventure! Congrats on the animals so far and be careful as the Africa bug bites hard.

HH

Yes the Africa bug bites very hard!

 

[jimbo1972]

Day 9
No hunting this day as I have exhausted my hunting budget.
Kian is nice enough to suggest sightseeing at his family's summer place in Port Alfred and if the Ocean conditions are good enough do a little deep sea fishing.
Really beautiful place and got to put my feet in the Indian Ocean but the Ocean was a little much to go fishing. We did go up river and saw seal followed by a great lunch of Calamari, snails and cheese, prawns and 3 different pizzas including Biltong.

 

[jimbo1972]

Day 10 Last day at Frontier
Took some more pictures and donated several hundred pounds of the meat I had taken to the Senior Center in Alicedale. Wrapped up taxidermy at Bushman River Taxidermy which is run Fred Burchell and his lovely wife Helena. I had serious reservations about having taxidermy done in Africa but after meeting the family and touring the operation I am certain they will do as good if not better job as I could get in the states. Not sure if the net price will be much lower once I add shipping but I know the money will go into the community where it is needed. Final dinner was as good as all the other meals.
Tally:
15 animals taken. 38 rounds of 300 win mag shot between range and hunting. 5 rounds of 7mm rem mag. Two animals cleanly missed on day 4, no wounded animals.

 

[jimbo1972]

Trip home:
Unfortunately the crowd strike bug delayed my leaving Johannesburg by a day but I still had to leave Port Elizabeth at the original time as Airlink airlines was not affected like Delta was. Fortunately I had a great travel agency in PWP travel out of Dallas TX. Can't say enough about Kasey who answered all my questions and then when my flight got rescheduled Valarie got me a reservation at City Lodge almost immediately. Since I had stayed at Africa Sky when I came in it was good to compare. Africa Sky is the best but City Lodge is pretty nice. It would be the equivalent to a good airport Marriott in the states. My recommendation would be get a porter they are uniformed with photo ID's. Tip them $5 or $10 and they will take your luggage right to the hotel lobby which is right in the airport. I was impressed with the Joberg Airport. Clean, organized and easy to navigate but then again my home airport is Atlanta which is the busiest in the world and can be challenging to get through. I ate dinner in the lobby and the food in the restaurant was extremely good if the wait service was a little bit underwhelming. Overall I would stay at City Lodge again.
Next morning a Porter was waiting right outside City Lodge and took me right to the Delta ticket counter. No problem checking in except when I tried to check my rifles in. The person who checks rifles in was supposed to be at work at 7am but didn't show up almost till 9. Once again this is Africa and I had plenty of time so no sweat although the nice lady from Delta was about to kill him. Made it through the limited Africa security no problem but when I got to TSA security they swabbed my hands and contents of my pockets and surprise I was positive for gunshot residue. While they didn't do a strip search or body cavity search they did almost everything else possible before letting me on the plane.

Wrap up and minor issues:
I used a tuffpak gun case with 2 thick midway use soft cases inside. Not sure if it is any better than another case but they worked great for me. Only minor issue is the plastic is of sometime that the airlines baggage stickers will not stick to. Ended up having to use clear packing tape to put small baggage tags on name tag.
AirTags works great in the states. In Africa almost no one working in the airports has a iPhone so they don't work very well.
I bought a MVST aluminum suitcase. I will never buy another suitcase with a built in TSA lock. Had problems with both of the locks and needed up breaking one on the trip. Ended up using electrical tape to keep that side of the suitcase closed.

 

[jimbo1972]

Not sure if this is allowed so please take down if it is not. We had a camera man film everything but it will take him some time to get the final video. Here is the teaser her did.

 

[jimbo1972]

Here is another video put together from pictures I took on my safari. Please take down if not allowed.

 

[cpr0312]

Congrats and thanks for sharing!