Russet Trails

21/10/2022

Bedding down for the evening under the stars in a unique experience.

05/03/2022

While on a recce to find some awesome trails destinations we came across this magnificent male Buffalo. He was taking in the heat of the day in a pool of water and admittedly we would have joined him had he not been so grumpy. Take a walk. Take in the bush. Go on trail.

19/02/2022

Waking up to an African Bushveld Sunrise while on trail is something you need to experience at least once in your lifetime. It will have a profound effect on you. It will put you on a route to ReWild Your Soul.

Photo Credit : Ewan Macdonald

18/02/2022

The dung beetle is an amazing little environmentalist with superhuman strength and can navigate more precisely than a Garmin.

When you are on your next trail and you come across one of these little guys take some time to observe them. See if you can distinguish between the dwellers, the rollers and the stealers.

The dwellers (Endocropids) hang around in their buffet of dung while the tunnellers (Paracoprids) bury their treasure where they find it. The most physical are the rollers (Telocoprids) while the laziest are the stealers (Kleptocoprids). The stealers find the brood ball of the rollers and parasitize of the rollers ball by laying their eggs inside.

The rollers pack the dung, form a ball and roll it in a straight line away from the p**p pile over various obstacles.

The rollers use their ball of dung as a food source and a place where the female can lay her eggs known as a brood ball. They will find the right soil and begin to dig the sand away around the base of the ball with their shovel shaped heads until the ball of dung is completely underground. The egg that the female lays inside the ball will hatch and the larvae will stay safe inside the ball and feed off the dung until they are fully formed and emerge as an adult.

12/02/2022

It's always a good idea to pack in a tarp while on trail. You just never know.

On a Primitive Trail with Brenden and Leighton from , this little structure kept me nice and dry through the night.

Not so much the next evening when we experienced the mother of all storms and the biggest I have ever encountered unprotected outdoors. Nobody was spared and everything got soaked. My inflatable pillow is still somewhere in the Timbavati. Some terrapin is probably using it as a lilo.

11/02/2022

11/02/2022

While visiting a lodge in the Thornybush area I nonchalantly left my trusty binos in the open lounge and went to bed. The next morning someone brought them to me in a very different condition than I left them. Thanks to Harry the resident Hyena.

07/02/2022

One of the most remarkable things about walking is stumbling across historical treasures like this. A hand tool from the Stone Age. We found this particular tool while in foot in the Greater Kruger area in the Mpumalanga region. These were known as Oldowan Tools.

Excerpt from "The Archeology of Mpumalanga" by Amanda Esterhysen and Jeannette Smith.

"In South Africa the Oldowan Industry
dates from about 2 million years ago. There is still some debate about which hominid made the Oldowan tools as there were at least two hominids in South Africa at that time
which were capable of doing so. The first was an early form of Homo, and the second was Paranthropus robustus, which went extinct approximately one million years ago.

Because the technology did not disappear when Paranthropus went extinct, it is often assumed that Homo was the toolmaker."

06/02/2022

A dream long in the making. Russet Trails was realised out of the need to expose the wonderful wilderness areas that we have on this planet of ours. While we fine tune our packages and get our website up and running keepnyour eye on us.

03/02/2022

03/02/2022