Today was another early day…on the road at 5:30 a.m.! Lions and tigers and bears….oh, my! Well, no tigers and bears, but WE GOT LIONS!!
We traveled about 30 minutes to a larger reserve that has several prides of lions. With a size of 20,000 acres, they cannot have more than 50 at any one time, and they do not count cubs due to their risk of mortality. If I’m recalling correctly, our guide Julian said they currently had 43 adults. Everyone had reiterated to us that there were no guarantees that we would see lions, but we were going to give it our best shot!
Julian said that the males walk patrols of their own”territory” at night, and vocalize during that time to warn off other males. The rangers use that information plus scout reports from the morning to have the best chances possible. I think we had been on the road about 15 minutes when someone said, “Lion!” Sure enough, we came up on 2 females and 4 cubs! The males were still out patrolling, and Julian said they will come back to the females when the females go off to hunt so they can babysit! If the males don’t come back and the females want to hunt, they actually hide the cubs in thick brush and the cubs stay STILL AND SILENT until the mother returns. After observing these cubs playing, the idea that they can hide somewhere silently for hours is pretty surprising! And the mother will not bring the kill back to them, once she’s killed it she will leave it, go get the cubs, and take them to the meal. If the cubs are 18 months old, the mother will take them with her to “observe” the hunt and kill. Once they reach 2 years of age they have to kill for themselves!
The females were sisters, and one was the mother of the cubs. We got to observe the cubs playing, and then saw some fun playtime between the mother and a couple of her cubs! Once we’d spent a good deal of time watching them, we moved on. We hadn’t driven very far when we got our next sighting. This one was quite a different experience, as this mother and her cubs (3 or 4,) were feasting on a recent kill! Later we would find out that our driver Julian had heard over the radio that a lioness had just killed a male Nyala. They were a decent ways into the brush, so it was hard to get clear pictures, but there was definitely some gore involved! It was actually very cool to see such a real-life experience that is part of their everyday life! On our way out of the park we came upon a family of giraffes , this one also with a baby. Julian told us the baby was no more than 6 months old, and you knew that because it still had it’s umbilical cord attached!! Sooo cool!!!
Before we knew it, our two hours had flown by and it was time to head to breakfast. Our Rockstar driver/ranger James took us to a great breakfast spot, where we had a great meal and had a cute African cat keeping our table company! After we had refueled it was time to head to the Oldest National Park in South Africa for a drive to maybe see some leopards and/or cheetahs.
This park was a drive-yourself-around park, so there were safari jeeps mixed in with regular vehicles. How anyone could drive there for the first time and not get hopelessly lost is beyond me, because it is 200,000 acres and the roads go every-which-way. I told James at breakfast that he’d done so good with the Lions and my absolute pinnacle was baby elephants, so if he could manifest that we’d be golden! He laughed and said, “We’ll see…I’m feeling lucky!”
The drive started like most of the others….lots of the same species we’d now gotten very used to. Our group decided that the Warthogs are the equivalent to rats or squirrels or chipmunks in the U.S….they are everywhere!! James stopped a couple of times to confer with another driver about what they’d seen and where. We then happened upon a spot overlooking the river that marks the boundary on one side of the park, and there was a single elephant on the other side of the river. We drove around some to see if we could find others who would maybe be crossing but couldn’t find any. We then ended up back at the overlook spot and parked to see if others would show up. It was then that we started to hear “trumpeting,” which is their stereotypical call, so we knew some had to be close. After a bit more waiting, with several more calls heard, and getting closer, James decided to drive us to another road nearby that ran along the river, so that maybe we could find some. As we were driving down the road, we passed a car, and the woman in the car said, “Oh, my….we just passed about 200 of them!” We thanked her, and then laughed and said to each other, “Yeah, right, 200!”
We continued down that road and all of a sudden, in a clearing headed towards the river, there were a few elephants…and some BABIES!!! We thought this was great, and started snapping our pictures, but as they moved on, we looked behind them, and there were more, and more, and more coming. It was literally a practically never-ending parade of adult, young, and baby elephants!!! Our ranger James said that the lady had not been far off, and it looked to be about 200 elephants!!!!! We were already giddy with excitement at what we were seeing, so we thought we’d seen it all…..we were wrong! All of a sudden James started the Jeep and sped us down the road and around the corner. There was a spot to park and take a break that just happened to overlook the river. We all got out, and I knew it was important when James started practically running towards the far end of the grassy area. This is where we had a small, but powerful window to watch this massive herd of elephants cross the river and climb up the opposite bank. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, watching this unfold was almost like an out of body experience. James told us we were very, very lucky, because it is super rare to see a heard of this size all at one time, and especially rare to see them cross the river. And once they crossed, they were out of the public area of the park, and probably wouldn’t be coming back over for awhile, so visitors in the next days or weeks won’t see any of them!! We had literally hit the elephant jackpot! I got to see more babies than I could have dreamed of, and I got to see with my own eyes how the mothers and other older females protected them all the way across the river! They literally swam across with the baby between them, and all you could see was it’s tiny trunk sticking out of the water. Once they got to the other side they would gently push the baby up the bank, as it was super slick and they didn’t have great footing. Eventually we had to leave for our lunch reservation, but I could have sat there and watched them all day long!
Having SERIOUSLY over-delivered on the elephants, James then proceeded to drive us up, up, up into the mountains in the park to a hotel and restaurant called, ironically enough, The Hilltop Restaurant. As this is still technically the “off season” until the 1st of November, it was like having a private restaurant at the top of a mountain. We were seated at a table surrounded by windows overlooking the mountains. I was pretty sure this day couldn’t get any better. We proceeded to have a fabulous lunch that included 3 bottles of wine (between 6 people…I abstained!) with great conversation and some good laughter! After a quick stop in the hotel gift shop it was time to load ourselves back in the Jeep and head down the mountain and back to our reserve. We may not have seen any of the elusive leopards or cheetahs today, but we were all so high on our elephant adventure it didn’t even matter! The drive back to our reserve was not bad, and we got back with enough time to shower and unwind before dinner.
I’ll apologize in advance for the excessive pictures and videos from today…it’s just too hard to pick my favorites! And if you want to hear the elephants trumpeting, I’d recommend leaving the sound on! There are 2 fun non-elephant videos at the end! I’m going to sleep as a VERY happy safari guest tonight!!!!
Carpe Diem...seizing life's adventures 