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Published: June 17th 2017
01 Paul
Paul next to a lioness.Geo: -25.9803, 27.7891
Today we spent the day at the nearby Rhino and Lion Park. It isn't a genuine wildlife experience, as the animals are segregated and in cages, but it is a guaranteed sighting of predators.
Our first stop was to see the animals that were in the small area. Here we saw tigers, including an albino tiger, lions – both male and female and hippos. We drove across the road to the main area. Here there is an area for general game; where we are able to self drive ourselves. We saw ostriches, warthogs, black wildebeest, blesbok, waterbuck, rhino, gemsbok and eland in this area.
We drove to the Vulture Restaurant. This is supposed to be a great place to see vultures. The park places animal carcasses here to attract the vultures. We did not see any vultures, but we did see a rhino.
Our next destination was the animal crèche. On the way there we stopped to view ostriches, black wildebeest, waterbuck and warthogs. At the crèche most of the animals are in small cages. Here we had close up encounters of rhinos, lions, tigers, crocodiles, hippos, various birds, squirrels and caracals.
One of the most interesting animal interactions was
02 Me
I am feeling unsure about being so close to the lioness. with the Marabou Storks that were not enclosed. They are large birds with a long beak and so, so ugly. I find them to be a bit scary and I did not like the small distance between them and I. As Paul took my photo I frequently looked at the bird, I didn't want to take my eyes of it!
We walked on to the reptile house. I hate snakes and didn't spend much time in there. We had a little look at the crocodiles. Then it was lunch time. We had a quick lunch in the restaurant and got back in the car.
At 1pm it was predator feeding time. This park has lions, cheetahs and wild dogs each in their own enclosure. A line of about 30 cars drove into the lion area first. We parked the car. Once all the cars were parked, the feeding began. A ute drove around and dropped off pieces of some antelope. The male lions are the first to feed and once they have eaten enough, then the females and younger ones can feed. This place was so busy, there were cars every.
The gates were then opened and most of
03 Rolling
A lion rolling around in the grass. the cars drove onto the cheetah area. Once again we tried to find a good place to park so that we could see the action. The cheetahs knew that the vehicle was going to feed them fresh meat. The chunks of antelope were thrown from the vehicle and the quickest cheetah would grab it and run off to eat in peace- very different to how the lions eat.
We skipped the wild dog feeding and went back to the lions. There was not much of a crowd at all now and we had a great view of the lionesses eating. We then went back to the general game area. Here we stopped to look at a herd of wildebeest- both adults and young ones. The young wildebeest are a sandy colour- very different to the adults.
Back at the main area, near the restaurant and crèche, there was a snake display- which Paul was very interested in. They showed us a few snakes and gave us information about them. It was then time for the cheetah run. We had to stand around. The cheetah was on a leash and in front of the cheetah was a piece of meat on
04 Hippo
A hippo with part of its head out of the water. a string. The cheetah was realised and it slowly ran after the meat. There was a problem and the meat was moving very slowly, the cheetah quickly caught it. They fixed their problem and this time the cheetah had a chance to run after the meat. It moved very quickly.
There was then a chance for a photo opportunity with the cheetah for a small charge. I patted the cheetah while it happily ate its meat. We then lined up for a photo opportunity with a python. Paul happily had it draped around his neck. I choose just to touch it while someone else held it.
We did a last walk around the animal crèche. This time the rhinos were outside of their home and so was the caracal. Back in the car we drove around the general game area, where we had nice sightings. It was now close to closing time, so we had to leave. We had a nice day out, the best thing was being able to see the predators close up, which is not always guaranteed in the wild.
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