Up Close and Personal

For our second weekend in South Africa, we took a three-hour drive north to Hlue Hlue Game reserve to see some local wildlife. We weren't sure what to expect but on a brief drive from the park entrance to Hilltop Camp (accomodations within the park), we had already walked within 20 feet of a grazing rhino, spotted zebras and scared off a small antelope.


The next morning we were up before dawn for a walking tour. We picked up our guide and his large rifle (yes, he'd had to use it before) at around six and drove toward the trailhead. As we came around a bend in the road, we startled a lioness with three cubs (less than 2 weeks old according to the guide) from their resting spot on the pavement. I stopped the car, cut the engine and, amazingly, she sat back down in the road and the cubs went about playing with each other, around 100 feet from the car. After a few minutes, one curious and brave cub began to walk in our direction, prompting the mother to also walk in our direction, in turn prompting the guide to politeley request that I roll up the windows. It turns out it was good advice- she continued past the car, around 2 feet from my driver-side window, which gave us an appreciation for the cat's size (her head would probably have come up to my mid chest if I were standing) and a little adrenaline surge despite the closed windows. The cubs came next, but were not bold enough to walk directly past the car, instead taking a little arc in the grass and stopping every few feet to check us out. The walking tour was less eventful than the drive, but worthwhile.


A few hours into our afternoon drive, we rounded a curve on a dirt road to see two parked cars, and around 50 feet beyond that a large number of elephants crossing to get to a river. We eventually got the impression that the herd had passed and we were impatient with a carload of loud teenagers so we pulled forward, ahead of both of the other cars. When I looked up, I saw that we had managed to park around 20 feet from the back end of a massive female elephant- a little too close. She turned around to face the other side of the road and let out a low growl. Soon after, all of the elephants became more active, pushing eachother back and forth in the road. To our right we heard the loud, continuous trumpeting of another elephant and crashing trees, which was quickly getting louder and closer. Several other elephants had squared off in front of us with ears flapping, pawing at the dust, and were beginning to approach. I looked in the rearview to see that the other cars were backing up, put ours in reverse and we got out. It was a close call, an idiot tourist move, but kind of awesome. On the picasa video, you can hear the elephant trumpeting angrily in the backround, a pretty disconcerting sound at the time (complements to Val for having the presence of mind to record it). The rest of our time in the park was more sedate, but we were lucky enough to see a leopard, an apparently rare encounter.


On Sunday, we drove east of the park to St. Lucia, on the coast of the Indian Ocean, where we took a riverboat tour to see crocodiles and hippos- from a safe distance of course. It was an incredible weekend and evidently not typical in terms of our close and numerous encounters. So far, two weekends well spent.


For pics and video: picasaweb.google.com/latrem --> click on the hlue hlue link