130 kilometres per hour - the fastest animal on the planet. In the pre-dawn light, six pairs of eyes scanned the landscape for our quarry. This was his habitat - he had been seen two days before and last night there were fresh tracks. With twenty years experience as a guide, Frans was confident he knew the animal well enough to flush him out. We passed by giraffes and antelope with barely a glance, stopping only briefly to investigate two large grey shapes a few hundred metres from the rough dirt road. On any other morning we may have been excited by the white rhinos, but not today.
'There he is,' a sharp-eyed companion shouted.
It took me a few moments to find him but then, moving slowly through the grass with his long, slender legs and body built for speed, was the cheetah. There are only six cheetahs at Shamwari Private Game Reserve and we had found one of them.
'I know this animal,' Frans said 'he is headed to the dead tree over there, to mark his territory.'
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| 'Our' cheetah. |
Frans manoeuvred the Land Cruiser across the open ground stopping close to the dead tree. Sure enough the cheetah came toward us, until he was just a few metres away. Rubbing his sleek flanks along the tree stump, he looked very much the lord of all he surveyed. We watched him enthralled - then after fifteen minutes or so he was on the move again. This time headed toward rougher ground and a deep gully. We followed as long as we could, more than a little nervous that the vehicle was not built for such a precipitously steep slope. Finally he disappeared over the edge of the gully.
'He won't stay there for long. That's leopard country - too dangerous for him. Watch for him to reappear on the other side.' Frans stopped the vehicle once more and we waited.
By now we had been joined by another Land Cruiser. Both guides were confident we would see the cheetah again, but for once Frans was wrong. He and the other guide walked down the slope toward the spot the cheetah was last seen. The second guide was armed with a rifle, Frans had a long antelope horn scavenged from a dead animal. No one asked how he intended to defend himself, or us, with it - I don't think anyone really wanted to know the answer. Again we trusted his judgement and his knowledge of the animals he so clearly loved. |
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Finally the two guides returned. The cheetah must have doubled back and disappeared in the grassland behind the vehicles. I wasn't disappointed. There would be no 'fun of the chase' without a few failures. This cheetah was not seen again while we were at Shamwari.
On our last morning Frans took us cheetah hunting again. He seemed to have a special spot in his heart for these beautiful cats, or maybe he just got tired of seeing elephants, rhinos, giraffes, hippos and lions to say nothing of the ubiquitous antelopes and warthogs, and wanted to search out something more elusive. Either way, our little group was delighted to take part in another pre-dawn chase. This time we were looking for a female and her two cubs. We had an idea where she might be but the prize wasn't ours. We had stopped for morning tea, having given up the chase, when word came across the radio that she was ten minutes from where we were. Frans bundled us back into the vehicle and we sped across the grassland fearful we might miss her - we need not have worried. We found her in the shade of some bushes playing with her cubs, clearly not in any hurry to move on.
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| The cheetah and her cubs. |
Shamwari Game Reserve was our second South African game park. You might remember we also spent three nights at
Botlierskop Private Game Reserve near Mossel Bay. It was a much smaller park than Shamwari. We were able watch animals grazing on the open plain outside our room - David loved it! I had a great time but it felt a bit too much like a large open zoo. I wanted the fun of the chase of a 'real' safari. At Shamwari I got that in spades.
Shamwari is much larger than Botlierskop and the animals are in their natural habitat with no hand feeding. Once again David slept through the morning drives - he doesn't pre-dawn starts. I got up at 5.30 am each day and had an absolute ball. We relied heavily on the skill of our guide, with no guarantees we would see any particular animals, but none of our group went away disappointed. We hunted down lions, rhinos, giraffes, elephants, hippos, zebra and of course, the cheetahs.
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| Did you know white rhinos are called 'white' because they have wide mouths and the word white is a confusion of the word wide? |
David, a cat lover from way back, was in feline heaven again! On the first day we saw a pride of females with their cubs, then on day two word came through that another pride had brought down a zebra. It was sad to see the zebra, but thrilling too. We saw him shortly after he was killed. He looked asleep, and slightly shocked, as if he couldn't quite believe he was dead. The lions were guarding their prize. The next day the zebra was barely recognizable. I have some photos of him but I won't post them here.
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| This photo gives you an idea of how close we got to the lions. |
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| The lionesses and cubs. |
Probably the best experience, was the elephants. One of the other women in our group specially wanted to see elephants. I did too, but didn't want to ask. We saw so many animals it seemed ungrateful to ask for a particular one, but on the afternoon of day two we went looking for elephants - and found them in a great thundering herd. Although the adults are pretty much lion-proof, they had baby elephants with them and when something spooked them, they rushed past us like giants on steroids. We followed them down to the river, where a big bull took exception to our presence. Frans threw the vehicle into reverse and raced backwards up a steep ravine. I had the impression he didn't like elephants much, or maybe he just had a healthy respect for their ability to damage his Land Cruiser.
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| Elephants in the river. |
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| When this guy started to look angry we back-up quickly. |
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| Hippos in the river. |
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| A giraffe - we saw this guy more than once. |
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| Even the warthogs were cute - kind of! |
Note: This is not a sponsored post. David and I paid full commercial rates for our stay at Shamwari.
For a link to last week's post click - here.
For links to all my posts on our SouthAfrican road trip click - here.
This will be my last post on South Africa for a while. I have more to right and will re-visit the topic in a month or two. In the meantime David and I have spent a few weeks at home before beginning a road and cycling trip in the north-eastern United States. Watch out for my first post next Friday/Saturday.
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