From Cape Town
The last six hours of safari certainly proved two things to me:
First, the big cats don’t always win. We went looking for giraffes last night, and wound up skunked on that score, but we encountered a hungry leopard instead. And skitterish impala. The impala, and there were lots of them, were uneasy not only because of the leopard, but also because of impending rain (despite our ranger’s assertion, it never rains in May). We followed the leopard over hill and dale as it stalked the herd for nearly an hour, even after it got dark, testing the limits of the Land Rover (I think the only limit really is a precipice). Though momma leopard (she’s about 16 according to our ranger) came close at least once, by the time we left there were exhausted impala and an unsatisfied leopard–and at least 3 groups of safari trekkers hoping for the outcome we saw last night, with the carcass and the leopard in a tree.
The next morning, after a rain that filled some of the creeks (and brought out some turtles that we hadn’t seen before, I realized how lucky we had been to see the big five plus one (the one being the out-of-control wild dogs) as early as we did. We still wanted to see the giraffes, but we were pretty well confined to birds (not a bad substitute, really; we saw some incredible storks and a few birds the ranger said we were really lucky to have seen because they are really endangered), but by the time we broke for tea and scones (this is a really civilized custom in the British world; we had afternoon tea, too, with a tablecloth on a compartment on the Land Rover) we’d struck out on all the big 5. On the way back, we saw two other land rovers, and the trackers, who were watching two giraffes. That made the trip complete.
I’ve spent the rest of the day getting to Cape Town, where I’ll begin a new set of adventures along the Garden Route. In the meantime I’m in a lovely B&B in a city of over 5 million, (we’ve got more locks than a delicatessen) missing the great expanses of the veld, and the roar of the Land Rover in pursuit of photographic opportunities. When Teddy Roosevelt went to Africa in 1909 to hunt, his opponents wished good hunting to the lions. Fortunately, we were the ones who had the good hunting, and I have the pictures to prove it!