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Editor’s note:

Sorry for the lag in posting. We had two consecutive days with no downtime, and therefore no time to write this post. I’m finishing this at 6:00am on Thursday, and we’re at our last stop now. But that’s another (couple of) stories.

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I mentioned yesterday that the typical safari day consists of a morning and afternoon drive, separated and bracketed by meals. The outline of a day at Phinda is:

• 6:00 am: wake up call
• 6:30 am: gather in the main lodge for coffee and a snack
• 7:00 am: board your vehicle (in this case, a Toyota Land Cruiser)

• 7:00 – 10:00 am: morning drive (you’re never back by 10:00)
• 10:30 am: breakfast
• 11:30 am – 1:30 pm: rest, shower, other activities, edit photos and write blog
• 1:30 pm: lunch
• 3:00 – 6:00 pm: afternoon drive (you’re never back by 6:00)
• 7:00 pm: dinner
• 8:30 pm: drinks in the bar, or back in your room; shower, get ready for tomorrow, edit photos and write blog

And then the next day it starts again. It seems like a grind, and indeed it is very different than sitting on the beach on St. Maarten. But I enjoy it, and apparently so do many other people.

Our guide Darren asked what we wanted to see today, and the consensus was that we would go look for the cheetahs we tried to find yesterday but couldn’t. But a few minutes after leaving the lodge, we came across a group of zebra, all bathed in the warm early light. So of course we stopped to watch for a bit. A couple of the females looked very pregnant, which you can see in the bottom picture above.

But we were in search of the elusive cheetah. There were at least two females that had been spotted in the area – one with a single cub, and one with three. So Mondla, our tracker took off through a field to see if he could find any trace of the cheetah. His report was that there was no sign of them, although one of the groups might have been through that field earlier. So we continued on. The only things we saw were a couple of monkeys in a tree and a group of warthogs in the grass by the road.

By this time we were half way through the morning drive, so Darren suggested we try seeking out some other animals. The kids liked giraffes, so we went towards the area where some had been spotted.

The thing about wild animals is that you can’t actually plan what they are going to do. So while we were looking for cheetah (and not finding them), other animals kept appearing. Which we had to stop and look at.

We saw zebra.

We saw giraffes (and more zebra).

We saw rhino and warthog.

There were three vehicles from Phinda all cooperating in the search – radioing back and forth with fleeting sightings, looking for footprints or scat along the road. Finally we got a glimpse of a mother and cub resting in the grass.

It’s very hard to see them; the grass is high, and once they walk into the brush – as this pair did shortly – they disappear. Darren, our ranger, tried to keep them in sight but it was impossible. And while we’re able to go off the roads into the brush, it was way too thick to follow this pair.

We believed that there was another mother with three cubs around, so the coordinated search continued.

About 30 minutes later, we found the second group. Again, they were sitting in the grass in the middle of a fairly large field. But the mother was sitting up, so we had a good view of her and stopped to watch. Then Darren moved the vehicle so we had a better view of her from the front, sunlit side. It was obvious that she was looking for something.

We were surprised when a group of zebra and a larger group of impala moved up from behind us. It’s hard to convey how amazing this scene was. The impala and zebra kept moving closer and closer to the cheetah; we (and two other vehicles) were sitting perhaps 20 yards from the cheetah while the other animals were a bit further away.

The prey were clearly unaware of the cheetah, while she was intensely aware of, and focused on, the impala. She quietly moved a few feet away from her cubs and looked like a coiled spring, ready to attack at any moment.

And then she did. The picture above is the best (only?) shot I got of her in action – it was impossible to even follow her with your eyes, and I was just pointing the camera and hoping to get something. She ran down the hill into the crowd of impala, who scattered, but wasn’t able to grab any. The zebra moved away as well, at a more measured pace. The impala were scattered, but were confused about where the cheetah had gone, so didn’t move very far. Then she came running back up, and chased an impala away from us, out of our sight.

Meanwhile, the cubs were sitting and waiting quietly where Mom left them, just like all of our children do, We couldn’t see it at the time, but the cheetah had caught the impala and the guides heard the mother calling the cubs. They trotted off in her direction and we followed. Two of the cubs got confused by a fence they couldn’t find a way through, but eventually the family was reunited and dined on fresh impala.

This episode took about an hour, and we were all emotionally exhausted from watching this example of life play out in real time. So we started working our way back towards the camp, and stopped along the way for some sundowner snacks. Dinner at the camp was an outdoor barbecue, which we all enjoyed.

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