The elephants came to the watering hole at breakfast again! Just toast, yogurt, and granola today. We're trying to get on the road to Kwandwe as soon as possible. The fog on the mountains this morning at sunrise was absolutely beautiful! It was also very windy this morning, but once we got through the mountains, the weather turned overcast and grey. Andre said that the change in weather conditions was common to see.
11:34 pm (SA)
Wow! What a day!!! After driving for three hours to Kwandwe Game Reserve ("kwandwe" means "blue crane" in Afrikaans), we threw our luggage into our rooms and headed out to try to dart an eland that had jumped a fence into a neighboring farmers pasture! Brendan and Pete took a tracker and attempted to dart him on foot, but he was not cooperating, and they decided to wait until they could get a helicopter in there.
We went back to the main house for lunch and some snacks. Colleen brought out her fruit roll-ups, gushers, and fruit-by-the-foot for the guys (Andre, Jonty, and Robin) to try. Even Brendon and Peter had some! They enjoyed most of the american treats except for the gushers - I don't think they liked the squishy juice in the middle. Robin then took us out back where they had an enclosure with two servals (these are the wild cats bred with domestics to get "savannah cats"). Robin prefers to call them "gay cheetahs" which is pretty funny.
Next we tranquilized and watched a $250,000 buffalo bull be relocated to a new herd. They are hoping he'll become the herd bull in his new setting and bring some fresh genetics into the herd. We then went on a little mini game drive and saw giraffe, oryx, spring bok, 2 white rhino, kudum and an old bull elephant. Jonty even introduced us to a local plant called spekboom (also called hog bush) that you can eat. It is bitter in the afternoon, but sweeter in the early morning. The thing we noticed the most was that no matter what time you tasted it, it had the ability to suck all the moisture from your mouth - it was really weird! At one point, we were too busy taking note of some weird type of algae in the ground and distracted our driver Jonty so that he drove us straight into a patch of mud and we got stuck!!! After several failed attepmts to jack up the wheels so we could back out, we had to radio the other vehicle to come rescue us (which had them all laughing). We then came back and watched a National Geographic special on darting wildlife starring our very own Brendon Tindall!
Dinner was really good and was followed by homemade ice cream which didn't help us warm up any! The plan for the evening was to try to trap some hyena, so while the trackers went out to set all the traps, Jonty and Robin took us on our first night game drive! If any hyenas were caught, they were supposed to radio us so we could go help them, but they never caught anything which was okay with me because the game drive was so amazing (cold, but amazing)! We saw 3 "sub-adult" male lions that were around 2 years old. We were able to get really close to them for some pictures. At one point, one of them started heading for the land rover and I think my heart stopped! Jonty said that sometimes they get ornery and like to chase the vehicles!!! Yikes! All three of the lions were somewhat injured - I guess they got into a fight with the neighboring male lion from another pride. We followed them for a good hour, waiting to see if they would decide to go hunting! It was so surreal!
On our way back to the big house, we spotted a lone female giraffe, which was very odd (they usually travel in herds). We watched her for a while (being careful not to shine the light in her sensitive eyes) and realized that she had a little baby with her! She must have separated from the herd earlier that day to give birth!!! It was so tiny and cute!
I can't believe we've seen so much already! Today was wonderful (minus a few camera issues - my digital camera died) and tomorrow we're going to be doing some rhino ear notching!!! It doesn't get any better than this! Goodnight!
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