Part VII: Jackpot

On our third and final day, we decided to go for a morning game drive instead of the walk.  And we got lucky.

With the mother far off to our right, stalking impalas, we had these three little cheetah cubs all to ourselves.  Julius told us that these cubs were about six months old.  He had been working this walking trail during that entire time and said he had not seen them for four months.  Very lucky, he said.  Here is a picture of Mama cheetah looking back at us and her cubs.

They showed only a little curiosity in us.  However, when we first stumbled across them sitting in the road, they were not startled or phased at all.  We had come around a bend almost directly on them, but even while the wheels slid in the dirt to stop, they remained sitting in the road, looking over at us casually.  Enjoy the pictures below.

Late in the day we came across the scattered remains of an old kill.  I’m told this is the jaw bone of a giraffe. My boot was about as wide as one side and about as long as one set of molars. 

Julius took us an overlook of the veld just before the Mozambique border.  Down in the basin of the nearly dry river you can see hippo tracks crossing up towards the veld.  Usually, Julius said, we’d be able to see rhinos and giraffes among the trees and grass, but today it was rather quiet.  We switched gears and went to a hippo lookout.

There were dozens of hippos in this river, and much like the baboons I first saw, they would all remain quiet until one of them started up a racket.  Everyone, then, would join in.  Inevitably this would lead to displays of strength and weaponry (teeth and the size of their mouths).  This one just below is the closest any of them got.

Below, here, is the best shot I managed to click of a hippo showing off.  Needless to say, these water elephants have huge mouths, opening them up to 180 degrees before clamping them shut.

So with an early morning of cheetah, one last high look at the veld and an evening with hippos, the walking tour came to an end.  We had our last night around the fire after dinner, sipping cognac and whisky, the Germans with their beer.  In the morning it was back to Satara.  A last picture with Julius and Jacob at the Satara rest camp.