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Published: March 5th 2008
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Cheetahs and Elephants
There are lots of elephants in Pilanesburg - hundreds. They are everywhere and kinda hard to miss as they weigh in at __ tons and have nothing at all to be afraid of. All the people we have met have seen elephants and of course, we have yet to see one. All of us has a list of what they want to see and these guys are on everybody’s - I have seen them on many if not all of my previous safaris but still I hope to visit with these amazing creatures again.
With this in mind, we saddled up in our vehicle (a much better metal beastie than our Cape Town clown car) and drove ourselves deep into the park on our quest. We were armed with the latest intelligence (after each drive, sighting information is entered into a computer and you can drop by the Ranger Office and tap on a touch screen to see exactly who saw what when). Confident in success, we set off with Dave at the wheel and me navigating; we have a good map and using the car’s odometer we can keep track of our position to within
meters when we are paying attention. Cathy Comment - even though neither guy knew exactly how far a “click” was on our first outing, they are a good pair and take us to the desired location and home without incident.
Well, we did not find any elephants but we were not disappointed. After cruising by a group of wildebeest, zebra and impala huddling under the trees given the light rain, Dave spotted something strolling along the edge of the road. I glassed it with the big lens and called out “Cheetah!” This is a pretty rare thing to see as the rangers estimate there are only 7-8 in the entire region (they require vast individual territories and loss of habitat has hit them hard). A cheetah stalk and kill is a holy grail amongst safari nuts. Well, this cat was stalking!
He/she (we are looking more closely at the photos to see if we can figure that one out) was headed right toward the group of prey we had just passed so Dave threw it into reverse and we tracked him as he approached them - invisible to the animals due to the tall grass. We had both
the cheetah and the fast food stand of animals in sight and watched him approach. Very little wind in the calm before a violent thunderstorm visible to the East and approaching fast. Whether it was sight, sound or smell that alerted them, our pale human senses could not tell but their heads went up and all eyes went toward the cheetah who exploded through the bush with unimaginable speed. I have pictures but they are a blur. Chaos reigned as a couple of dozen animals launched themselves in several directions. Inside the van, Dave was racing in reverse to keep us abreast of the cat while Amanda and I climbed all over the others going from window to window in an attempt to get a shot and burning through 1’s and 0’s at a furious digital pace.
The cheetah was unsuccessful this time but was undeterred and headed off for another group of animals nearby. By now, a Bakubung bush vehicle had spotted our van and its antics and came over to see what we had found (a common way of finding animals is to look around to see what others are looking at) and our two trucks continued
our stalk together.
The cheetah found another group and bounded into their midst but the action carried over a hill in a direction where we could not follow. We believe it was successful though because, upon review of Amanda’s photos, Dave spotted the cat hidden in the grass mere feet from an unsuspecting Wildebeest. With that kind of an edge, we hope and think he/she ate well last night.
We returned home tired and happy and crashed after a fine American meal of bacon blue cheeseburgers cooked on our little grill, fruit salad and baked beans. After we had turned in, a massive thunderstorm tore through and apparently lit the inside of our bungalow as light as day, shook it like a bomb and knocked our power out. I slept right through it.
The next morning our partial power outage hit home as we desperately tried to figure out whether Hillary had suffered a much-deserved ego-crushing in Texas and Ohio but had to go back into the bush without knowing the outcome.
Another 5 am departure but the sunrise in the bush alone was worth the price of admission.
We finally got our elephants this
morning - a small breeding herd led by an imposing female. I got some pretty good shots but my favorite was one of a series in which her cute youngster is trying vainly to get a hold of a nipple for some breakfast while she chews him out and refuses to slow down enough for him to succeed. Oh, we found said herd by employing a time-honored bush tactic: we followed the poop and, friends, fresh elephant poop is hard to miss.
Cathy’s comment - Nothing is weirder than actively looking for fresh dung and then much to my dismay, watching both Dan and Amanda take photos of it. Why on earth do we need pictures of shit? I hopeful he doesn’t post that one.
We also got some really good giraffe pics which I will include as well.
Tonight, dinner and gambling in Sun City!
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