Big Five Day Six: Cheetahs and Elephants 19 June 2009

Big Five Safari Day Six: Cheetah Sanctuary and More Elephants

Today was a lot more leisurely than the past few days. We got to sleep in until 7:00 a.m. After breakfasting on the veranda of the main lodge we left with Hein, our driver for the morning. We asked him to show us animals other than the Big Five, to round out our experience. He obliged.

A knowledgeable birder, he found lots of different avian species for us. First, the yellow horn bill (Zazoo from The Lion King). We saw buffalo weaver, tawny eagles, and grey heron. In addition, we came upon a den of dwarf mongoose – several of them were playing and grooming each other.

We then made our way to the cheetah sanctuary, which is part of Camp Jabulani. They do amazing work rehabilitating cheetahs and other indigenous wild animals. They have a breeding program for cheetahs as well.

We even got to feed a cheetah by hand (Nadine was glad we remembered hand wipes!). The cheetah we met is named Sheila – she is part of the breeding program because she cannot be reintroduced into the wild.

We also saw a very rare king cheetah. It has very distinctive black striped markings down its back and darker spots than regular cheetah. King cheetahs occur when the cheetah parents have the recessive gene for these markings - they are not otherwise genetically distinct from the other cheetahs.

After that, we viewed wild dogs eating (very disgusting). We also saw a caracel cat fairly close – we could see its long black-tufted ears. A fairly large leopard tortoise was near the road as well. They are beautiful- called leopard tortoise because of the markings on the shell.

We had a night-time elephant ride through the bush. Didi did an amazing job identifying the animals we saw – she could tell the difference between a bush rabbit and a jackal even though we could see little more than their eyes reflecting in the groom’s spotlight until we got closer.

A final late evening drive netted us a small group of young lions and lionesses. Our evening driver, Carl, explained that they were probably rambunctious juvenile animals left behind by their parents. The parents were out hunting and didn’t want the kids messing up the hunt – apparently teenage lions are not good at hunting and will ruin a pride’s game stalking by being too loud.

Dinner was great, again. Sirloin steak or springbuk and a wonderful bread pudding for dessert. The chef, Rudolf, is classically trained and it shows. The food preparation and presentation has been exceptional.

We leave tomorrow for Cape Town and our self tour of the coast. Scott is starting to get nervous about driving - they drive on the left side of the road and they do it quite quickly.