Lions and springbok and giraffes, oh my!
Unfortunately, the trip is coming to a close, but to keep our minds off of our departure, we journeyed 1½ hours to Cape Town’s only free roaming Big 5 Safari called Fairy Glen. In case you didn’t know, as I didn’t either, the Big 5 consists of the lion, the African elephant, the Cape buffalo, the leopard, and the rhinoceros. The members of the Big 5 were chosen for their difficulty in hunting them.
After eating at the breakfast buffet in the lodge, we all climbed into the Safari Jeep/tractor-looking vehicle. Our Safari Ranger was extremely knowledgeable and answered every question we threw at him. Do you know what a diamond and a zebra have in common? Well, this question stumped us for a length of time and then finally Allie connected the word ‘dazzle’ to zebras, and we learned that a group of zebras is known as a dazzle. In this dazzle of zebras that we saw, there was a 4-day-old zebra. Precious.
“Wildebeests look like they were put together by spare parts.” That is what our ranger said about wildebeests, which is also what the face of the Beast from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is based off of. Interesting fact: when a wildebeest is three days old, they can run as fast as the adult wildebeests. CRAZY!
At Fairy Glen, there used to be 14 giraffes but then the head male contracted a virus that spread to the rest of them. So, currently there are only two giraffes there. But, the two that we saw were so graceful looking. I am a HUGE fan of giraffes, so any giraffe sighting was exciting for me. We learned that both humans and giraffes have 7 neck vertebrates. That is very interesting to think about because I don’t know about you, but my neck is definitely nowhere NEAR as long as a giraffe’s.
If you ever find yourself in a situation where a lion is charging you, then we were advised by the ranger to keep eye contact. I guess I’ll try to maintain eye contact while high-tailing it out of there haha! We saw a male and female lion just hanging out underneath a bush. We all were very quiet as we approached these lions, even though I know I wanted to bust out some Lion King tunes! After seeing those lions, we went to a different area of Fairy Glen where 9-month-old cubs were enclosed in and where they were also laying in the shade. There were three cubs in this area and even from spending a few minutes around that area, we could tell what their different personalities were, such as who was more energetic and playful and who was more easily spooked.
At the end of the safari, we ended the same way we began…with a lunch buffet! It was glorious. On the ride out of Fairy Glen and back to our bus with Sedick, we came across an elephant playing with a tree log. Not a twig or a branch, it was an entire tree log, minus the leaves! Elephants look so majestic. It was the perfect end to a great day on a safari!
