Last Week in Africa

Our apologies for not posting for a while.  We have not had any connectivity at a number of locations and have been so busy that we just have not had time to go through our pictures.

Following our stay at Kwandwe, we spent 3 nights at Ngala, which borders on the Krugar Nature Park.  While there we saw a number of young animals including the 4 month old hyena below and five week old leopard cubs.   We have a number of other pictures of young giraffes and elephants to show you but we'll have to wait until we are home.

We also saw giraffe's fighting.  They were battling for dominance to see which of the males below would be able to mate with the female nearby...who didn't appear to really care what was happening.  They lean again each other and strike with their necks.  As our Ranger explained, it is rather gentlemanly as one giraffe waits for the other to get his barrings and enables him to take a swing before moving on.  These battles can last for a day or more until one of the giraffe's gives in and walks away.

The following pictures are from our next few days in Hermanus and Rob diving with the sharks.  The coast around Hermanus, including False Bay, is the best place in the world to see whales from land.  The whales come to the bay to mate from September to May each year.  We saw a few breach and were able to get this picture.

Finally, Rob did go diving with the sharks.  I stayed on the second level of the boat far away from any jumping great whites.   As you can see from the following pictures, they look a little scary up close.  

We will share better pictures once we've had a change to go through all 1200 but as usual, have to run for a plane shortly.

See you all soon!

The Animals and Our Friends at Kwandwe

We have just spent four nights at The Great Fish River Lodge in the Kwandwe nature reserve.   It is very difficult to describe our experience.  It will do my best but will likely have to tell you all about it in person once we are home.   It was absolutely magical.

We saw lions mating 10 feet from our jeep.  We saw elephants mating which is extremely rare.  Our ranger, Doc, had never seen this in the 10 years he had been working as a ranger and said that it was the one thing he hoped to see in his life.   That experience left all of us in awe.

We also saw young lions playing and practicing how to kill and young elephants practicing locking their tusks and fighting.   And, that’s just the start.  We’ve taken about 800 pictures so we had to choose what to share with you.

The Kwandwe nature reserve was created 10 years ago to restore the area to its original state with the animals roaming the way they had hundreds of years ago.  Seven farms were purchased over 22 000 hectares and animals were slowly introduced.    The villages on the land were all allowed to remain there many of the people work in the reserves and lodges.   On the 22 000 hectares there are only two lodges and two houses.  In the houses, you can bring your family or friends and have the entire place to yourself.   At full capacity, we were told that the reserve can host approximately 130 people.   So, there are not a lot of people at any time and visitors get a very intimate experience.  Not quite as intimate as Rob and I.   We were actually the only guests at our lodge for one night and we were the only guests with our Ranger and Tracker for 5 game drives.  Not only was it amazing to be by ourselves but we became good friends with Doc, our Ranger, and Siza, our Tracker.  We laughed and joked as they told us stories about their families and boyhood stories of growing up here when it was still farm land.   We told them about Canada and answered all of their questions about snow, what our houses are like, etc…

We have placed a number of pictures below because we are catching a plane shortly to head to the next lodge, Ngala near Krugar.   It is owned by the same company and we have been asked to say hello to some people who now where there and had previously worked with our friends at Kwandee.   Rob and I have both talked about lowering our expectations for the next park because we know it will likely not compare to what we have just done. 

We are having an amazing time and feel very blessed to have been able to meet Doc and Siza and get to know them, how much they respect the owners of the reserves, and how much the reserves have given back to the communities.