On Wednesday in Plettenberg we decided to go on a 2-hour tour through a game preserve. I had wanted to go to Kruger National Park but that was at least a 4 hour drive from our home base, however, in Plettenberg we were only a 15 minute drive away from a game preserve.
We booked the 11 am tour and drove off. As soon as we turned onto a dirt road and went through an automatic gate we started seeing animals, mostly zebra and sprinbok.
These cuties were just hanging out in front of the lodge.
We saw hippos, giraffes (they only have 3, a mother, father, and daughter), cape buffalo, ostriches, eland, and crocodiles.
Hippos!
There is a baby hippo in the grass somewhere. Our guide said that hippos can be very dangerous and will attack people in the water. They can open their mouths very wide and will just crunch right through canoes and then will kill you, especially if there are baby hippos to protect.
Don't remember what this is, it sounded like the guide said "narla buck".
Father and daughter giraffes.
Cape buffalo.
Don't remember what this is.
One lone crocodile and a lucky bird because its not feeding season for the crocs.
A bunch of crocs, sunning themselves. For some reason it gave me the creeps to see them all just lolling around like that.
Yet another hoofed and horned animal that I can't remember the name of.
And now we have the big cats and some wild dogs.
These are the only two lions at the preserve and the male is neutered. The preserve is surrounded by dairy farms (we saw lots of cows on the drive to the preserve!) and if the lions get loose they really wreck havoc on the dairy herds. With just two lions they are better able to contain them. We drove up to a gate, our guide got out of the vehicle and opened that gate, drove in, closed that gate then opened the other one. He went through the same procedure when we came to the cheetah enclosure.
The lions are fed from the back of a truck (which looks nothing like the guide truck, don't want them thinking we're food!) that usually has a dead steer on it. A lot of the beef comes from the dairy farms, the farmers usually kill the steers.
We're not food so the lions grew bored with us.
Once outside of the enclosure again they gathered enough energy to stare at us.
The wild dogs. They are very dangerous in the wild and run in packs of 20 to 30. They will kill a cheetah if they get the chance.
These dogs have noticed something and are headed for it.
What is this wild dog looking at?
It's a cheetah! This guy was just lying by the fence, not caring that we were there because we weren't obviously food. There are two male cheetahs and the game preserve has been looking for a female. The cheetahs are also fed from the back of a truck, just like the lions, but they don't like beef, they prefer game like zebra or springbok.
The wild dog was jumping around by the fence but the cheetah was having none of it and got up and walked away.
Why can't we all just get along? Sad doggie.
We saw quite a few ostriches too.
But never got very close to them.
We didn't get a chance to see the white rhinos because they were off hiding somewhere. The guide told us that they "dehorn" them, they cut the horn off to prevent poaching. Powdered rhino horn is worth a lot on the black market. I hate poachers.
That was about it for the 2 hour tour and we were happy, we saw lots of animals and learned a few things about animal preservation in South Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment