We planned for a full day on Day 3 and it ended up getting even more jam-packed. We took off on our morning game drive and again tried to find the cheetahs to see if they were on the hunt. We found the male cheetah, but after a while of watching him relax in the morning sun, despite a few poses that seemed to indicate he was on alert to hunt, we realized that he just wasn't ready yet. So as our final task before we headed back for breakfast, we tracked the elephants we had seen the night before.
To find the elephants, William tested the limits of our Land Cruiser and before long we were so far off road on a hillside, that not a one of us thought we would be able to get back on the path. Still no elephants though. It's amazing how something so big can hide so well. But William was not deterred and he stood up in the vehicle and told us to be quiet. "Did you hear that?" he asked. No one heard anything. But sure enough, a few more moments passed and all of us could hear the rustling of branches and before long the three elephants came into view. This time they approached the truck and seemed to display a bit of disdain that we had invaded their morning foraging territory. The largest of the three approached our vehicle and seemed to sniff the front grill. In the truck, we were assured by William, they posed no danger. It didn't make it any less exhilarating.
They then passed on by, however, continuing their path of destruction until for some reason they pulled an about face and headed back in our direction. The three were all females and they always seemed to move about in the same order with the smallest of the three in the middle. As they passed us for a second time, the smallest, who seemed to have the most attitude, turned her head toward us, raised her trunk in our direction, gave a short trumpet, and, in Lisa's words, "flipped us off".
After the game drive, William told us to be ready early for the afternoon game drive as the plan was to follow the cheetah, who would almost certainly be hunting. However, before that we had a short late morning trip planned to Nompondo, a local Zulu village. We had mixed feelings about the trip. On one hand, we were curious to see how the locals lived, but on the other, we felt uneasy about the hypocrisy of going into depressed areas. Some of our concerns were warranted as we first were escorted to a small local grocery amidst a moderately populated area with ramshackle structures made of a mixture of traditional building materials like sticks, thatch, and clay and more recent materials like bricks, tin roofs, etc. The grocery mainly was an opportunity to buy some local crafts, but it was tough to shake the feeling that we were a mixed blessing to the local folks. We won't get into my personal feelings too much about this excursion and two other similar visits we'd make to local communities (the shanty townships of Cape Town and the Mukuni Village in Zambia) and instead focus on the positives. The school visit in Nompondo was rewarding as it was great to see that even in an area where unemployment is 65%, they make a concerted effort to provide a strong education for the youth (perhaps the unemployment rate is a good incentive to prioritize education). The kids were amazing and sang a wonderful folk song to us, "Sho sho loza", which tells the tale of when people in the village used to ride on the train for days to go work in the coal mines and used to sing the song to encourage the train to get them home faster. Unfortunately the most meaningful song that our group could come up with to sing back to the students was "Old MacDonald". Moving on.
We got back to the lodge, had lunch and then met up with William. We spent a while driving around but William was unsuccessful in picking up any sign of the cheetahs and no word had come in from any of the lookout points, so we moved on. Probably the highlight of the afternoon's drive was a close encounter with two male kudu. There was not as much brush this time, so we had clear sight lines and one trotted ahead of us on our path. These are truly magnificent. A second highlight of the drive was a showdown between two male nyala. We had no idea why they were sparring, but the entertainment value for us was rather high. We also had the fortune of seeing a malachite kingfisher which is apparently somewhat rare and elusive. Dave snapped a few images from a distance and caught the bird in flight which excited William. Other afternoon sightings included a herd of wildebeest and our first time seeing a giraffe drink. Giraffe's necks are not flexible enough to reach the ground so they have to crouch down in a very uncomfortable looking position to reach the water. Making it all the more humorous is the process they go through to drink. Once they are in their crouch, they are prone to attack. This is the only time that a lion will attack a giraffe. So their head is on a swivel, looking right then left then right. Then they will start to crouch and something will spook them, so it's right back up again to begin the process. After several minutes of this, they finally get into their crouch and begin to drink. Upon finishing, they then whip their head back up and spit out any remaining water, apparently because their nasal passages are flat and they might choke on the water.
We watched for what seemed like forever, but probably was around 20 minutes or so, as the cheetah pulled the hide off the animal and ate, first from the hind quarters (the tender part) and then from the neck and breast area. We could hear bones snapping and our silence seemed to increase the sounds of the feast. Not for the faint of heart. Dave kept moving from one side of the truck around to the other to photograph it from different angles in William's spotlight. At one point, as Dave came around the vehicle, the cheetah took notice, stopped eating, cast an ominous glance in Dave's direction and hissed. Now Dave's been hissed at plenty by our cats, particularly Nigel, but none of those incidents had quite the bladder loosening effect of a large male cheetah hissing at him. After a while, the cat left the meal and just trotted off. William was surprised as this behavior was strange for cheetah's who will usually stay with the meal until finished. Despite the incredible experience, Lisa told William that it was great, but asked when we would see an actual hunt and kill. Dave later joked that, judging by the look on William's face at that point, they almost did.
One more stop before we got back to the lodge and we arrived at the base of a cliff wall. William shone the spotlight up on the wall and we could see baboons sleeping on the face of the cliff. Apparently it's a rather safe place to avoid being eaten by nocturnal predators. We put an exciting Day 3 in the books after a pre-dinner wine gathering with Jim and Jenny, and the three other couples in our group from Atlanta (Bill & Flo, Randy & Gloria, Al & Jane).
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