June 18
We woke up this morning at 4:30 AM and flew out of Cape Town as we watched the sunrise. We had said goodbye to Anton and our apartment, but when we landed in Upington we were welcomed by our old friend and safari guide, Arun. We shopped for food and then drove for a few hours to our house in the Kalahari Desert, just twenty minutes away from the safari park. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and playing with meerkats. There are two groups, ones in rehabilitating that used to be pets so I could touch them, and the Wild Group that had been reintroduced or born in the wild who I only watched. They were very playful and so cute that I understand why people would want them as pets. However, I know it is wrong, so don’t buy meerkats!
Later, we all made dinner together and played Uno that evening, though before that one of the interns showed us a poisonous scorpion that creeped Ronit out!
June 19
Today was our first day on safari here and Ronit’s first ever. We saw animals, but not the kinds we expected. For example, we had expected to see the Big 5 but leaned that only two of them are in the park. We were looking forward to seeing lions, leopards, or cheetahs and giraffes but only saw ostriches, different species of antelope, small birds, etc. This really is a birdwatching park…
The Bumper-Sticker
We did see a few cool things, though; a herd of thirty ostriches, something even Arun hadn’t seen before; a jackal following a honey badger in search of food; an ostrich taking a dirt bath; an ostrich sitting in water; some make ostriches fighting; a cape fox; and a bat-eared fox. We ate out at a restaurant and I had steak.
June 20
We saw a lot today! After heading out in the morning as usual, the first (major) animal we saw was a cheetah! We watched her for over an hour and were very excited because she was hunting! However, she had two perfect opportunities to strike and she didn’t even attempt it! At one point she was crouched and ready to go with a springbok five meters away from her and she just lay there after stalking it for so long. Her lack of action was disappointing, but she was still very cool to see.
Later in the day, we saw a caracal. This was a rarity that we did not expect but that I had really wished to see. It was beautiful, even more so because of its unexpectedness. After driving past a restroom later, Aba decided that he needed to pee so we pulled over. As he started going a woman drove up and kind of unsuccessfully shamed him resulting in him yelling back at her. The reason I mention this is that later we saw a different caracal (incredible, right?!), even closer than before, but Arun accidentally got the van stuck in a ground squirrel/prairie dog hole and we had to wait for help (while still watching the caracal).
The next person to drive up was the pee woman with her husband! They helped us get free, but I could tell that she was judging Aba. After that, also relating to judging, we stopped for a snack at some picnic grounds and Aba and Ronit walked a few meters away from the border to take some photos and this old couple started yelling at them to come back. They didn’t because they weren’t done photographing, so the lady took her super-zoom camera and took pictures of them to turn into the rangers! Luckily we had taken Arun’s logo stickers off the car earlier before getting help, because otherwise she could’ve filed a complaint through the park towards his company. As it is, she hasn’t found us yet… Anyway, right as we drove away from the sight of the second caracal we discovered a Black-Footed or African Wild Cat!, another rarity! We still didn’t see any lions, giraffes, wildcats, leopards, or hyenas just to name a few, but I am very happy today!
June 21
Until twenty minutes before we left the park, we only saw one un-immemorial group of animals. A honey badger was hunting in the hills and three goshawks and a jackal followed him, waiting for scraps.
We watched them for ten minutes early in the day, but other than that we only saw birds. We couldn’t drive on a lot of the trails because we didn’t have a safari vehicle, so I practically started and finished a 300-page book (yay! a real non-electronic book!)in the car. The best part of the day was when we stumbled across a pride of six lionesses with a bloody Oryx carcass, which two of them were eating from. The other lionesses napped, but when they opened their eyes I was astounded at how pure their yellowish-gold color was.
The lions here are much larger than at Kruger Park, where we went last year, but considering how short these posts have been I’m thinking that Kruger and Chobi might be better…
June 22
Contrary to yesterday’s expectations, we saw a lot today! In fact, we saw so much that I’m worried that I’ll miss something in this post, so I’m apologizing in advance. We left this morning and revisited the kill-site from yesterday, hoping to find lions or scavengers. The lionesses were gone, but we did see a fairly large Brown Hyena, though it ran away quickly. Arun figured that they had gone to the water-hole to drink after their large meal, so we headed that way hoping to see them. Instead, we found another (different) lioness with a lil kill of her own. It was another Oryx, but it was in such an odd position that we thought it was a honey badger, at first. It was a fresh kill, done very recently, so little of the meat was eaten and when she feasted there was plenty of blood to stain her face and neck. One interesting thing that we noticed is that she was wearing a radio tracking collar, something unusual among the wildlife here.
We watched her for a while and then drove off to look for more animals. The great thing was that there were no other cars around the lioness! They kept driving by without noticing or stopping so that we could show them! While we wandered, we saw a Red Hartebeest, a very rare species of antelope to see in Kgalagadi Park.
We went back to the second kill-site and discovered that another, also collared, lioness had joined the first one. They played and nuzzled and both of them ate. I had the pleasure of using binoculars, so I was able to see them rip out his and intestines and twist the Oryx’s skin so much that whole pieces of it came out, bloody and raw. Ah, Africa. Anyway, we continued on and found a cheetah! This happens to have been the same cheetah we saw a few days ago, as she was in the same territory, so she again mislead us into believing in her hunt. Even though she wasn’t as active as we hoped, I am still very happy that we got to see her again. There was once catch, though. A few cars gathered around after we arrived, most noticeably to us a white open-backed truck. There were serious looking men inside wearing camouflage suits, and Aba and Troy are certain that they are poachers. Arun was asleep, so he can’t say. I hope they’re wrong, but now I feel very nervous and worried about the animals. We revisited the first and second lion kill sites and ate at a restaurant before returning home. At the second site was an oddly parked empty car which made me very suspicious given the potential poachers we had just seen.
Kill-site one
Kill-site two
Hartebeest
Kill-site two
Cheetah
Kill-site one
Kill-site two
June 23
We saw two really cool occurrences today. I’m actually going to start with the second one because the first one is super exciting so I feel like it should be last. Okay; we were driving down an empty road when the only other car’s drivers pointed out a cat to us as they left. Upon closer inspection, we saw that it was a grey African Wild Cat! Unlike our previous encounter with a small cat, we were right up close to this one! The most incredible thing was his similar it looked to a domestic house cat! If I saw this car walking around a friend’s home I would assume it was their pet! The cat was light grey and fluffy and beautiful with light green eyes, so I just wanted to go to it as pick it up and kiss it. Given the way it looked, I was almost convinced that I could (without getting bitten, that is)! Arun even allowed Troy to get out of the car, something prohibited in the park, for in order to get better pictures.
Now, for the first occurrence:
We started the day heading toward the second kill site to check for scavengers and the lions. However, we stopped before we reached it because of a new (for us) and rare cat; a leopard. There was only one other car, and though he was far away, the leopard was wonderful. We were amazed when he casually came down to the water hole directly in front of us and stared drinking! He was slightly strained with fresh blood from a recent meal, explaining his thirst.
We were so hooked on the leopard that I didn’t realize how close his proximity was to the two-lioness pride we had headed towards until it was too late. One of the lionesses came down from her hill and nearly met with the leopard until he noticed her and ran away. The lioness leisurely followed him to the tree he had climbed and sat nearby to wait while the other lioness guarded their previous Oryx kill. The first lioness got bored and took a nap, allowing the leopard to sneak away. That is when the second lioness left her kill to follow him. A minor side note; over twenty jackals swarmed the unprotected Oryx carcass, making the area surrounding it look like a pit of furry snakes.
The lioness looked for the leotard, but he had disappeared. We were all relieved that he had escaped. Though we had wanted to see a kill, this was not the once that we wanted. The lionesses didn’t want to kill him because they were hungry, they just wanted to eliminate their competition. Though I love both animals, I am thrilled that the leopard wasn’t hurt, especially considering his species’ rarity in Kgalagadi.
P.S.
We also stopped by the first kill site to check on the carcass, and there was NOTHING but a skull…
June 24
We were driving along a deserted dune road when the leopard unexpectedly walked in front of the van! At first we thought it was a different leopard because it was so far away from our other sighting, but it ended up being the same one; remarkable! This handsome male came so close to us that we nearly could have touched him! We spent roughly 15 minutes alone with him, not a single other person in sight. He left after that and about three seconds later four cars drove up. We were the only ones to see him!
Much later in the day we finally saw giraffes. They weren’t too close, but I’m still glad we got to see them.
After that, we saw a Cape Fox cub! We saw an adult a few days ago so were able to see how much smaller the cub was in comparison. He looked tiny!
Lastly, we saw another cheetah, though not as close, but we left it shortly in order to look for other animals. Also, Aba wanted me to add that some crows landed on our car
and that Ronit has been high-pitchingly meowing to get animals’ attention, so…
June 25
Today, sadly, was our last day on safari. Thankfully, we saw two very rare animals/occurrences. First, Aba spotted, pun intended, four Spotted Hyenas! We had previously seen a Brown Hyena and saw a nursing Spotted Hyena at Kruger Park last year, but these hyenas are extremely rare in the Kgalagadi. They were enormous, much larger than many animals and even some of the cats we had seen. They were very close to us, starting on top of a dune and eventually crossing the road in front of us, and once again we were in the only car in the area.
After they left, another car came. In the middle of the day, we found a cheetah. She was incredibly skinny and it looked as if she hadn’t eaten for days, so we were hoping to see her hunt. And my gosh, we did. After letting an Oryx pass by and with no prey close enough to sprint at, we were prepared to wait for a long time.
As we ate brunch in the car and joked about Bruno being the Big 1 (a play-on-words of the Big 5), we suddenly saw that the cheetah had gotten up and witnessed her running directly at the car! Troy’s window was down and he was eating a large baloney sandwich so I assumed she was going for that, while Aba thought she wanted to eat Troy, when she suddenly veered across the street and pounced on a lost young ostrich about a meter tall. The poor thing never had a chance. She dragged it under a tree and we watched as she choked the ostrich to death, its legs kicking and its mouth silently screaming as it opened and closed it for breath. We then witnessed the cheetah gut and eat the large bird while a jackal waited nearby for his share. We had wanted to see a kill, a baby ostrich, and have the skinny cheetah fed, but I still can’t help feeling a bit sad for the ostrich.
However, that didn’t stop Asher and me from fantasizing about sending this to my mostly vegetarian and animal-activist friends and imagining their horror at seeing the life so dramatically choked out of such an innocent being…
Hehehe… Revisiting the site later, two jackals were feasting on the remains of the ostrich and the cheetah was walking away over the ridge. Before we left the park for the last time, we were overjoyed to finally see a Kori Bustard, the heaviest flying bird alive, fly.
Mammals:
Lions
Leopard
African Wild Cats
Cheetahs
Caracals
Spotted Hyenas
Brown Hyena
Black-Backed Jackals
Cape Foxes
Bat-Eared Foxes
Honey Badgers
Gemsboks/Oryxes
Greater Kudus
Blue Wildebeests
Red Hartebeests
Giraffes
Steenboks
Springboks
Common (Grey) Duikers
Scrub Hare
Slender Mongoose
Yellow Mongooses
Meerkats/Suricates
Ground Squirrels
Birds in Singular:
Common Ostrich
Cape Sparrow
Black-Chested Prinia
Sociable Weaver
Spotted Flycatcher
Marico Flycatcher
Scaly-Feathered Finch
Kalahari Scrub Robin
Burchell’s Starling
Cape Glossy Starling
Cape Crow
Pied Crow
Southern Yellow-Billed Hornbill
Cape Turtle-Dove
Crowned Lapwing
Burchell’s Sandgrouse
Namaqua Sandgrouse
Helmeted Guineafowl
Northern Black Korhaan
Red-Crested Korhaan
Kori Bustard
Jackal Buzzard
Steppe Buzzard
Pygmy Falcon
Lanner Falcon
Greater Kestrel
Gabar Goshawk
Southern Pale Chanting Goshawk
Verreaux’s Eagle-Owl
Wahlberg’s Eagle
Tawny Eagle
Martial Eagle
Bateleur
Black-Chested Snake Eagle
White-Backed Vulture
African Hoopoe
African Red-Eyed Bulbul
Crimson-Breasted Shrike
Common Fiscal
Brown-Crowned Tchagra
June 26
We left the lodge after playing for a while with the extremely sweet meerkats and talking to The Professor, the old woman running the sanctuary. We stopped to see some bushman and I bought a keychain, then drove to a mall for a snack but ended up buying clothes and shoes.
We made it to the Augrabies Falls lodgings shortly afterward, ate dinner, and are about to sleep. I am eating a tangerine.
June 27
In the morning we went on a safari-type drive at the game reserve. The scenery was wonderful with dazzling rock formations. We saw Oryxes, Giraffes,
Bat-Eared Foxes,
Marvins, Klipspringer,
Steenbok, and even a Cape Mountain Zebra!
After relaxing later, before eating dinner we went to see the Augrabies Falls. They were very nice, but we sadly saw a drowned monkey in a natural pool nearby. After seeing a dead Marving, RIP, and eating dinner, we went on a night safari in a jeep with a different guide as well as Arun. We additionally saw a Rock Rabbit and Hartebeests. My favorite part, though, was the clear and star-filled night sky.
June 28
We packed in the morning and went on a safari drive again. After breakfast, Arun took a short nap in the car with his door open. We then cracked up as we saw a bare-butted monkey sneak in and steal his cracker!
We drove to Upington, only stopping to see a pink store with two soft and sweet cats!
I’m blogging now, but we plan to go out to dinner with Arun tonight. You can blame this super long blog on Aba! 12-4 11-6-4-21 6-23-26 23-1 23-6-5-24-6!
Ella
