May 2 -6

When I imagined the safari we were going to participate in, I thought of elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos and zebras. I had no idea how many more animals we would either catch a glimpse of or watch in their natural habitat. Here is the list of what we saw during the eleven game drives we participated In:  the big five, elephants, rhinos, Cape Buffaloes, lions and a leopard; the antelopes, impalas, kudus, grey durkers, a klipspringer, steenboks, water bucks and a wildebeest; the animals we expected, monkeys, baboons, giraffes, zebras, hippos and wart hogs; the animals we hadn't considered, jackals, a civet, a porcupine, mongooses, a chameleon and termites; and finally the birds, a vulture, gray herons, Egyptian geese, brown snake eagles, guinea fowl and the yellow billed hornbill. There was no lack of animal sightings on every ride into the bush.

However, some of the sights were so memorable that they are permanently etched in my mind. There was the pride of thirteen lions, three females and ten cubs who were dining on a zebra. One of the cubs picked up a severed striped limp in his mouth, shook his head and headed off to a more private spot. It was my first zebra sighting and I held out hopes that I would also see live zebras.



There was another pride of sixteen lions including two males, females and cubs. One male had settled between some low branches, gnawing on the head of a wart hog, while others in the pride shared the rest of the animal in the tall grasses. In a portrait of motherly love, a female lay between two of her cubs gently licking their ears, faces and paws.

At night by the light of the spotlight, we saw a beautiful male lion, lying on its side just a meter away from the vehicle. From time to time, the tail made a single swish. Slowly, the lion turned his head, lifted a front paw and licked it. Languidly and carefully he turned to lie on all four legs and as if he knew he was the centre of attention moved his head from one side to the other, allowing us to find his best profile. The stillness was suddenly broken with a solitary regal roar of his majesty. The hair on my neck rose and I felt a shiver down my spine as goosebumps rose all over. Very deliberately the lion then rose on all fours and majestically strode into the dark bush. He had put on a show for us and now he wanted his privacy.


Another evening, we came across a female luxuriating on a rock. Sensing that she was on display and with the cameras clicking, she held her head first at one angle, then on an other and finally straight ahead to stare at us. When she was sure that we had caught her from every side, she lay her head on her paws and totally ignored us.

During the heat of the afternoon, a wart hog and its two young came to lap the water at the edge of the water hole. Once sated, all three rubbed their backs on the ground and rolled in the mud until they had cooled down. Then came an entire herd of impalas, at least one hundred, delicately standing at water's edge to drink their full before moving on into the grasses to graze.

Later still, two elephants emerged. They lowered their trunks into the water, first bringing the water to their mouths and then spraying themselves. Slowly they wandered further into the water and sprayed heir backs. Now cooled they continued to edge of the pond where the wild grasses grew. They wrapped their trunks around a large clump of grass, pulled and transferred their lunch from the trunk to the mouth before they moved back among the trees.


Nor will I forget the herd of elephants with all their young calves at their side, who lumbered across the path right in front of the vehicle, the young males trumpeting and flapping their ears.

A giraffe, taller than the tree in front of it, nibbled at the top leaves and then gracefully glided across the path, moving first both left legs, then both right legs to sample the leaves on the other side.

One night, as the spotlight swung from side to side, it illuminated a leopard lying in the middle of the road just like an oversized cat. It's tail was waving languidly. Upon being disturbed, it lifted its head to look back at us and then headed into the brush to find more privacy.

Riding along the river, we got out of the vehicle and moved closer to the shore. We saw a number of rocks emerging from the water. Suddenly the rock roared and opened wide its mouth revealing a pink maw with rows of large flat teeth. It then became obvious that the rocks had ears sticking out of the water and were making their way across the river. We had finally seen hippos.

The domesticity of the prides of lions and herds of Cape buffaloes and elephants both with their offspring moved me greatly. Mothers are mothers regardless of the species. Babies are adorable even if they are four legged. It was a privilege to experience a world so far removed from my own and as we completed our final game drive, I put down my camera to fully appreciate my last glimpses of the unpredictable and precarious life that exists in the bush.