Baboons Take Over Kruger
Baboons have quite the reputation in South Africa. At Cape Point, you’re warned not to get out of your car when baboons are near. At Kruger, you’re warned to turn your refrigerator around so the baboons don’t get in and eat all of your food. The man who loaned us binoculars to check out the lions compared baboons to the devil, and told us about the time they broke into his house, destroyed everything in sight, ate all of his food, and pooped all over his house.
I’m sure baboons are evil. But we find them to be irresistibly cute, even when a group of them took over a bridge in Kruger one morning, making it impossible for cars to pass.
Swerve to the left? They’ll get in your way. Swerve to the right? They’ll jump on your car. Try to speed up? They’ll distract you with cuteness. I mean, seriously, aren’t they adorable?
Day Four on Safari: Day of the Lion
On our last day in the park, we woke up early and left camp as soon as we could. Within ten minutes, as we drove along the road out of the camp, we saw other early morning safari-goers crowded on the road. We saw that they were watching a female lion down in the valley below.
Pretty cool way to start the day, we thought to ourselves. Little did we know that the lion sightings would just get better. Shortly after we left the area with the female lion, I got out of the car (don’t worry, in a permitted area, although I’m not sure what the difference is, considering there are lions roaming about). I was just about to photograph the sunrise when Sean started shouting for me to get back in. There’s a lion up ahead, he exclaimed. He just crossed the road. Get in! Get in!
We set off in pursuit of the lion. We finally spotted him walking around a clearing set back from the road. It was a male lion, with a full majestic mane. I snapped as many pictures as I could, but since he was on the move and in between brush many of them turned out blurry.
As he paraded around, he periodically let out giant roars. Sean and I were both awestruck at the sound – not something you hear every day.
Then he was on the move, and so were we. For the next half an hour, we followed the lion in our car the best we could. He crossed back and forth over the road and seemed to be patrolling or marking his territory, just like our cat does at home.
It was thrilling to be on the hunt with the lion, but eventually he disappeared out of our sight.
We hung out for a little bit, hoping he would make a return. While we were waiting, we chatted with a South African man in a nearby car. Hear the roars? The man said. There is a lion pride in the valley below. We all grew silent and listened. Sure enough, a low rumble came from off in the distance.
The man then started playing a CD in his truck that contained sounds of a lion roaring. This didn’t seem like the best idea to us – at best, it is just too much interference with the lion’s natural habitat; at worst, for all we knew, it could provoke the lions into attack. Nevertheless, the lions did respond. He would play the CD for a few minutes, and we would then hear the answering roar. But the lions never materialized in our view again.
A couple of hours later, we came across one of the most fascinating – but simultaneously disgusting – scenes from our safari. Sort of the grand finale, I suppose. Even though we were late to the scene, we somehow managed to grab as good of a viewing spot as one could get. Two female lions had recently killed a buffalo near the side of the road. We watched for at least a half hour as one lion stood guard off to the side while the other one had herself a morning snack. We were so close we could hear tearing of the skin and muscle as the lions went to town on the buffalo. Eww. Real life Discovery Channel, I suppose.
Lion 1 to the left, lion 2 on the ground by the kill
The lions trade places
Lion 2 heads off into the brush to stand guard
Lion 1 surveys the scene before she sits down to eat
Lion 1 circles around the kill, making sure everything meets her specifications
And finally, Lion 1 settles down for her snack
Let’s Go Pens!
image from the postgazette.com
Pittsburgh Penguins, that is. Opening game of the 2010-2011 regular season tonight at the new Consol Energy Center – kick some Philly butt!
Day Three on Safari: Day of the Olifant
It was apparent early on that Day Three was going to be the Day of the Olifant. We stayed at Olifants camp the night before, and the camp doesn’t get its name for nothing. Olifant is Afrikaans for elephant. We saw an absurd amount of elephants our third day.
Here are two of the coolest spottings from Day Three:
Thirsty Elephants
In the late morning, we pulled over to a lookout over a valley close to Olifants Camp. We saw movement off in the distance and watched as a herd of elephants made their way, single file, down to the river for a drink and bath. We watched the elephants for a good half an hour. It was really spectacular to see the elephants carry on their normal business in full view, without them having any idea they had spectators.
Elephants marching
A big elephant led the way, and tested the waters first.
He must have determined it was safe for the little guys.
The elephants waited patiently, but lined up along the water once they got the okay.
There were some really teeny baby elephants!
Another herd (or maybe another subset of this herd, who knows) had been waiting patiently but demanded their turn. The first group moved out and let the second herd come to the water.
Group two takes over.
Elephant Crossing
In the afternoon, we came across a roadblock: an elephant crossing. We noticed elephants always travel in the same way: flanked on either side by the biggest elephants, with the tiniest elephants snug in the middle.
Day One and Day Two on Safari: Big Five
The Big Five: a term referring to the animals that are most notoriously difficult and dangerous to hunt. (Not to be confused with our Belgium Big Five).
We weren’t actually hunting any animals on our safari, of course, other than with our eyes and camera.
Hours of staring into the bush make your eyes play tricks on you. We stared at this rock for at least five minutes, debating whether or not it was some sort of cat, before we realized it was a rock.
It is every safari-goer’s goal to see The Big Five, and some don’t get to complete the task. You’d have to be blind to miss seeing elephants in Kruger, but the leopard and lion can be elusive, sneaky cats. We got lucky and spotted the Big Five by the end of our second day on safari.
1. Elephant:
Elephants were the first member of the Big Five to cross our path and our second animal spotting. We saw an elephant within five minutes of entering the park. Here’s some of the best elephant spottings from Day One and Day Two:
2. Buffalo:
We spotted the second member of the Big Five in the late afternoon of the first day. Their curved horns are pretty cool.
3. Leopard:
Being crazy cat people, we were anxious to see some big old cats of any variety in person. In the waning hours of sunlight on our first day, we came across cars blocking the road. We came to the scene late, so we didn’t get the best viewing spot, but it soon became apparent what all of the commotion was about. A leopard, with all of its glorious spots, was lounging around on a branch up a tree. It turned out to be our only leopard spotting.
4. Lion:
When we didn’t spot any lions on our first day, we were quite disappointed. On our second day, we happened upon a car stopped on the road with its engine off. We asked the young man inside what he was checking out. He pointed to a female lion, off in the distance, resting in the grass in the distance under a tree. Without binoculars, all we could see were her ears.
Later the same day, after driving around for hours without seeing ANYTHING, not even impala, and sometimes not even other cars, we came across a family parked on the side of the road intently staring off in the distance. We pulled up beside them and started chatting with the driver. He was from South Africa, and made outings to Kruger on a regular basis. He loaned us his binoculars to spy on lions far away who were protecting their kill from vultures overhead. Even once we knew where to look, the lions were too far away to see much once we gave the binoculars back. We debated leaving, but decided to hang out for a while in the hopes something would happen. We weren’t having much luck driving around, anyway. About 15 minutes or so later, we saw movement. One of the female lions decided she was thirsty and sauntered across the road within inches of one of the cars that had just pulled up to the scene.
5. Rhino:
Who knew the rhinoceros was such an elusive animal, especially since they are the third most prevalent animal in Kruger? We only saw a group of rhinos once, at the very end of our second day. We didn’t see any again, but our Big Five sightings were complete.
