No Spotted Leopards Spotted

The third and final day of the safari trip was almost anti-climatic.  But, that’s the crapshoot nature of, uh, nature.  It is not always where you want it to be, and it sure does not always act as you hope it does.

The birds crying in alarm from the area across from the lodge brought hope to the rangers that a leopard or lion was in that area.  So we saddled up and all four vehicles fanned out in that direction.  We could find the brainless birds because they nervously cried out (which should also give away their position, I would think?).  But, despite cris-crossing the bush, we never saw a leopard or lion.

Two of the rangers even got out on foot to try and “spot” (sorry, I couldn’t resist) the hoped-for leopard or the settle-for lion, but to no avail.  We drove around, with not much to see.  Finally, Justin decided to take us far away from there in hopes of spotting other animals.  That didn’t work well, until we got word that some lions had been spotted far away.

On our way to the lions, we stopped for a bit to watch an elephant who was hanging out, eating by himself.  There were some other elephants theoretically nearby, but we all voted to see the lions rather than find the elephants.

I had assumed, given the sheer number of birds we saw on the previous morning drive, that we would see a lot this morning drive as well, but we did not see nearly as many.  There were still a goodly variety, but I was surprised by the difference in just one morning!

Just before getting to the lions, we came upon two tiny gazelles that I believe (but am not certain) were Steenboks, based on a tip from Parent Program parent Kyra Bannister, who was in our vehicle (or, I suppose, we were in hers) and we really enjoyed going on safari with her and her daughter, Brina.

(As mentioned in a previous post, all of the folks in the vehicle were great to be – although how could it be otherwise.  We were in South Africa, with our kids – scratch that, young adult offspring – on safari.  You’d have to be in a pretty bad place right then to not enjoy the heck out of it.)

We came upon the eight lions.  (I did ask Justin if the ranger who finds them gets to take a lot of pride in doing so. Not surprisingly, the entire vehicle groaned – as did the people in it!).  They were resting, this time sated by what had clearly been a big kill and feast since we last saw these same lionesses.  They had put on weight, although there were no male lions around to reassure them that nobody would notice the extra weight and that they still look great in that outfit.

The most remarkable part was, not far away, several zebra, wildebeests and multiple impalas were dining away.  They knew the lions were there, and the lions knew they were there, but since the lions were full, and there was no element of surprise, there were no Discovery Channel moments.  It was like a DMZ in the veld.

After a while, we headed back toward the lodge – there was breakfast, checkout, hangout, and fly out to come.  On the way back, we stopped for four dwarf mongoose who were playing in the road.  Dan, sitting behind us with his daughter Claire, mused aloud – “Dwarfs.”  So, I had to get one last quip in – so I slowly noted, “hmmm, I would have thought there would be seven.”  I think people didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I’m pretty sure they did both!

After breakfast and checkout, we had some time to kill before going to airport, so I downloaded photos, and stumbled upon the lucky video I took of the lioness playfully rubbing heads with two others, and then half wrestling, half stretching, play with one of them.  It’s posted a little further down – so take a look in full screen (we had to compress it to get it on the blog, so the quality is good, but not as great as the original – still fun to view though).

After the hour flight to Jo-burg (when you fly through a city four times in ten days, you can call it by its nickname!), we flew back to Cape Town (nickname: The Mother City – not very catchy!).  The hotel check-in  process at the Radisson Blu was relatively easy for such a large group, so that was painless.  Unfortunately, the room we went into was half the size of the room we had the first four nights in Cape Town, so that was a bummer.  But, at least the room had great views to Robben Island and to the south.

In fact, our second to last morning there we had a great view of a double rainbow over the Atlantic to the South.  So we had that going for us.

(If you are looking for a hotel in Cape Town, I would highly recommend the Radisson Blu – a great setting not too far from the V&A Waterfront, and an easy cab ride to City Centre.  If you want to walk everywhere, however, it’s not the place to be – it’s a tad far from City Centre. One highlight was having breakfast al fresco hard by the ocean.)