Kichaka Game Reserve

Yesterday we arrived at the Kichaka game lodge.  What an amazing place!  Everything is done first rate.   The game reserve is privately owned, and encompasses a total of 7000 hectares (about 15000 acres).  The Kichaka lodge is about two hours north of Port Elizabeth, and only about 40 km from the beach, but miles away from civilization.  The lodge mirrors British civility - fantastic dinners (prepared while you are on the game drive), plenty of drinks, and sumptuous surroundings. Not to mention regular breaks of varying degrees of tea, high tea, afternoon tea, evening tea and a variety of others. We now understand where the inspiration for the appetites of hobbits came from. 

Here is our guest house that we are staying at in Kichaka.  Not shown is a small private pool that we are also able to enjoy.

We have been doing two game drives a day - one in the morning and one in the evening.  During the first two drives we have seen a total of 17 types of animals.  These are the ones we 'crossed off' from the list provided, yet there have been plenty of others that we've seen. 

You will often hear reference to 'the big five' - lions, leopards, elephants, rhino, water buffalo.  Of these, we have see lions and elephants so far.  The term 'big five' refers back to the colonial days, when these were the five most likely animals to kill you!

The morning drives start early, we rise at 5:30, get a cup (or three) of coffee, and then are off in the Land Rover.  Each game drive lasts two to three hours.  During that period, we will go to three or four areas in the game preserve.  Halfway through, we stop - for coffee in the morning, and for 'sundowners' in the afternoon - shown below are Cam and Caroline enjoying the sundowners.  The chips were a huge hit with Caroline!

On the first game drive we happened on a mother lion and seven cubs.  The cubs ended up without both their mother and father.  The mother went out hunting, and never came back, and the father left for an unknown reason.  Consequently one of the mother's sister lions adopted the seven cubs and has been raising them.  They get food every 2-3 days, depending on what the lion can catch.  If you look below at the zebra, you will see a wound from the lion on her left rear quarter.  The lion tried to  catch the zebra, but the zebra apparently kicked her and got away.  Some zebras kick the lions so hard that the lion's jaw will be broken and they starve to death.  The zebra will survive, and amazingly the wounds tend not to get infected.

One of the rarer animals we happened upon was the brown spotted hyena.  They are typically only seen at night, and even then are quite rare.  We were able to follow this one for quite some time.

We saw things large and small.  One of the smaller ones were the spiders.  Below you can see a Golden Spider - the female, and three (much smaller) male spiders - which was right outside of our room!

During the morning's game drive we happened upon a tower (aka herd) of giraffes.  The size, and their ability to move with such alacrity was hard to believe.  We happened upon two young males, about 18 months of age.  They were kicking and hitting each other to assert their dominance.  Chris, our guide, relayed a story were two males were hitting each other so hard, that one of them developed internal bleeding, not unlike what happens during a high speed car accident if the chest hits the steering wheel, causing internal bleeding.  The giraffe eventually died from the bleeding.

We happened upon a cheetah, a rare animal to see.  They are at the 'bottom of the top' of the food pyramid, below lions, hyenas, and leopards.  As a result, they don't sleep well.  Unlike the lion with its strength, and the leopard who can sleep in trees, the cheetah can only rely on its speed.  The game reserve, at almost 15000 acres, can only support three cheetahs, two females and one male, which gives you a sense of the territory each requires.

We saw several zebras.  There are many theories on the rationale for the black and white stripes, ranging from avoidance of disease carrying flies (claiming they get dizzy around the stripes) to confusing predators.  We also happened upon one buck elephant.  It was about 100 meters away, foraging.

Before we saw this elephant, we saw the impact of the elephants traversing the landscape.  The bush below was spread apart from the elephants.  We also saw 'elephant highways.'  The original roads in Africa in the 1800s followed elephant highways, since they were the straightest and clearer roads through the bush.