Waking up on Day 4 was particularly painful. Although we'd only been at Zulu Nyala for three full days, it seemed like it had been weeks with all that we had seen. The other reason it seemed so long is that we'd been meeting William for game drives at 6:15am. Well today would be different. We had to meet William at 5:15am. We were heading to the oldest national park in Africa, Hluhluwe-Imfolozi National Park. The drive to Hluhluwe was about 40 minutes and we did it in the open air Land Cruiser safari vehicle. We had the luxury of canvas sides that William was kind enough to put up, but it was ridiculously cold.
There would be several differences in our experience today. Hluhluwe is huge, lots more animals, but it covers a much larger area. In addition, being public land, we didn't have the luxury of heading off the network of roads, which could make animals harder to track and spot. We were warned by William that we might not get many good sightings today. Well, the luck that had been accompanying us all trip was with us at Hluhluwe as well. We were at the gates to the park just before the 6am opening time. We had driven less than two miles or so into the park when we were forced to stop in our tracks. We hadn't even left the paved portion of the main road that leads into the park. Ahead of us on the road were a large male and female lion. We could tell immediately that the male had an injury to his front paw. This, however, didn't seem to prevent him from pacing along the side of our vehicle. Lisa was in the "death seat", nearest to the cat as it glanced menacingly in our direction. William warned us to remain silent. Lisa had been taking a video and she remained so still she refused to stop the video, so we now have 12 minutes of the lion pacing and glaring directly up at us, barely 10 feet away.
After some time, he lost interest in us and regained interest in his mate. Yes, we could tell very soon that these two cats were in the midst of mating when we had come upon them. And before to long, they ignored us and got back to it. "Lion porn" was the joke of the day, but what a thing to experience. William told us that it was quite likely that the paw of the male could have been injured by the female as the mating process is painful for the female. Apparently, they will try this many times over the course of a few days while the female is in heat. We decided to give them some privacy and move on.
The expansiveness of Hluhluwe was apparent as the road curled around and over hills, presenting us with some amazing views of the morning mist breaking up the canopy of trees in the distance. We had a few "routine" game sightings including a standoff with two buffalo on the road, monkeys picking food morsels out of elephant dung along the side of the road, two vultures perched high atop a tree waiting to scavenge. We then stopped for a short picnic breakfast and an opportunity to do some jumping jacks as the morning chill was still in the air and several in our group still had blankets wrapped around them in addition to hats and gloves and jackets. At the rest area where we had lunch, William was told by the security guard there that there was a buffalo carcass nearby in the river that ran adjacent to where we were. William said we would give it a little while and then return later in the morning to potentially capture crocs feeding on the carcass. We ran out of luck here and although we saw some crocs, there was no feeding to witness.
Our morning was capped off with an elephant "hunt". William was at it again, checking dung to see how fresh it was, checking the ground for elephant tracks, but it was fruitless. Since we couldn't go off road, running into elephants at this point would have to be left up to luck. We saw none that day. We did, however, have a great glimpse of a herd of impala and a few zebras dotting the hillside, a true African landscape. We also got a glimpse of some varied bird life and also several white rhino bedded down for their late morning nap. 
After lunch, we headed off for Emdoneni Park which is a cheetah rehab center. Our guide there took us through the feeding of various cats from the African wild cat to the caracal to the serval and finally the cheetahs. Most all of the cats here were either orphaned in the wild and brought here or they were victims of misguided folks that tried to raise them as domesticated pets. The goal of the rehab center is to take the cats they have, breed them and then release the young back to game reserves to be raised by cats in a more natural setting. The African wild cats looked just like house cats except several pounds heavier. The caracals were amazing. The keeper would throw a piece of chicken over a 7-foot fence to the cats, but they would not wait for the meat to hit the ground, leaping high in the air to catch it just as it cleared the fence. Amazing hops. We were able to view these cats close up while they were eating and even pet the servals as they ate. There were also young serval kittens that we were able to pick up by the scruff of their necks and pet as we held them.
But this was our first experience to get up close and personal with cheetahs outside of our game vehicle. We were warned by the guide before we entered their enclosure to leave our backpacks outside approach the cheetahs from behind and not leave anything on the ground if we wanted to see it again. These were tame cats used to people, but they loved to play and humans typically get the worst of it playing with cheetahs. He got one of the cats to lie down and then we took turns petting the animals. This was to be the first encounter of several with big cats in a controlled environment.After dinner this evening, we set out on a night game drive, leaving at around 8pm. We had been told by someone at the lodge that it was William's birthday, so we surprised him with a chorus of "Happy Birthday" as he climbed into the truck. He was embarrassed and thanked us, but then it was back to business as he was hopeful that we would find the leopard as they are more active in the evenings. However, we would have no luck this evening. Basically, William drove us around with a spotlight in one hand, scanning the surrounding area for glowing eyes. It was a bit cold and the animal activity was low. We did get to glimpse a large porcupine crossing the path in front of us and also saw a spotted genet, which is somewhat akin to a lemur. We didn't get a good view of it, but after the game drive we were having a cocktail and as luck would have it another genet crossed our path as we were walking back to our room.
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