Since it was the De Wildt-Shingwedzi ranch that I was staying at, I think it would be suitable to first mention the cheetahs. They're the only approved breeding center in the world for cheetahs, and the only one to successfully retrain and release them into the wild. Believe it or not, they eat Eukunuba food (and the occasional donkey).
The left two photos are a group of young males having their lunch — in the left photo, that's a very rare king cheetah on the far left. The middle photo is cheetahs following us as we drove off, and the right photo, well, that's pre-lunch cranky cheetahs. Below are a couple photos of the “front yard”, “back yard”, and “driveway” of the lodge we stayed at. As a point of trivia, the cost of staying there was a fraction of the cost of the average hotel in Toronto. Barring the flight costs, this is a cheap vacation.
In the right hand photo, taken on the drive up to our lodge, you can see one of the many free-roaming residents. Below we almost ran into a few friends of theirs coming back late at night (a few minutes earlier we'd come upon a very, very fat rhino and her baby, but I wasn't fast enough with my camera after a few Windhoek Lagers).
Below are a few more residents of De Wildt. On the left is (I think) a caracal, then a heard of impala, and, if you've got sharp eyes, a couple of crocodiles (if you don't have sharp eyes, don't go swimming or you risk being eaten), a big ant hill, and a large bird of some sort… Sorry my nomenclature skills aren't more elite. The birds are funny — they rest on the road, and when you drive up to them they won't move until you basically bump them with your car, and then they just hop forward forty feet… It can take a kilometer before they've given you right-of-way.
There was also a pack of African wild dogs, which I take it are sort of the African equivalent to coyotes (they're not like domesticated dogs at all). They have a really bizarre yippy bird-like bark, and are vicious hunters, enjoying the kill — they swarm their prey, slowly taking bites off it, but letting it live… When it eventually dies of shock, they pounce on it and reduce it to skeleton in minutes.
After that story, how about something more pleasant? Here's a picture of a tortoise.
On the right is the sunset at
Shakama Game Lodge where we had dinner a couple times (highly recommended). You can't see them in this photo, but as we were having sundowners, we watched kudu drinking at the water hole (which you can just barely see), and giraffes grazing nearby.
Other than that, there's a group of girls sitting across from me in the lobby here where I'm online. They asked what I do, so I told them I make porn (which I guess is true, yeah, I'm a pornographer, and I love it)… I'm pretty sure they liked that answer a lot.
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