- Rayshawn
Well, I am not entirely sure what expectations I had for safari. I think in terms of landscape I was expecting something a bit more savannah-like; as you can see from the pictures there are actually quite a lot of trees and shrubs. I do think it’s fair to say though that today exceeded whatever expectations I might have had. I swear sometimes I think luck follows me – I have a habit of being in the right place, at the right time.
We had two drives today – one that went from about 6:30am until 11am, and another from 3:30pm until about 6:45pm. Today on our morning drive we started off by seeing (other than the various antelope-like creatures which are quite common) a giraffe which was right up next to the road. They are amazingly graceful creatures, and also very unique-looking. Charismatic megafauna indeed – D was saying that most people do not eat giraffe because the animal is too well-liked. Same with zebra, but apparently zebra doesn’t taste very nice, either.
Next, Alice spotted a herd of water buffalo, which we looked at for a good 20 minutes. These creatures are apparently quite aggressive; a lot of them were staring at us, but none of them charged us or anything. I had never seen wild water-buffalo before, just the domesticated ones in Cambodia and Vietnam.
Next up were two elephants, also literally right next to the road. Luckily for me I was on the same side of the vehicle as both the giraffe and elephants – I was maybe 3 meters away from one of the elephants. It is so neat watching them eat. They are apparently quite destructive, what with eating like 21 hours a day or something. We saw one literally kick a tree down and then eat parts of it.
After this Alice continued her mad spotting streak by seeing a cheetah. I’m not at all sure how she did it – I saw it after she spotted it but it was very well blended into the grass and just bounded away when we got too close.
Next up was the thrill of the day, if not the entire safari: we saw a pride of lions hunting water buffalo. Our spotter Mpho had been working five years and this was the first time he actually saw lions hunting. Apparently seeing a pride is relatively common, but some people can go their whole lives without seeing a hunt. We were told at the time that we would never see this again, so this experience did not go unappreciated. D was definitely very excited as well, and it was amazing to see something like this up close and in person. Just breathtaking, really, and all the credit goes to our spotter and the spotters from another camp that tracked the pride much of the morning.
After the lions disappeared into the bush we headed back for lunch and a quick respite. Some monkey tried to steal our food and after D left I had to chase it away twice (I was closest). In totally separate news I looked at a map today and yes, where we went shark diving is nowhere near the Eastern Cape. Maybe I will get there at some point.
Anyway – the afternoon drive was also spectacular. It’s funny how this safari goes – you go from driving along just looking at the scenery and madly trying to spot animals to stopping and staring some crazy things right in the face. In the afternoon we saw more antelope creatures (kudu, which I know is very tasty, waterbok (sp?), and impala which is my favorite to look at), more hippos, wildebeest, zebras, jackals, and, following an awesome sundowner by a large lake, a male lion. He wasn’t doing much besides sleeping but he was huge and so beautiful.
In case you can’t tell I’m a bit behind in writing these up and I need to go to bed now, so postings for the last few days will come when I get home most likely. But stay tuned because there is more to come, I promise!
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