Safari photos

This is our lovely lodgings at Schotia. Complete and utter love at first sight!

Elephants at waterhole, Addo national park

Did you know that the English name "ostriches" derives from the fact that when seeing those enormous eggs produced by ostriches the Englishmen exclaimed "Oh what an ass-stretcher" i e o-strich? If not, you know now. Amazing facts you do learn in Africa, huh?

Grumpy, old rhino at Schotia.

Giraffes at Schotia. Beautiful and strange animals. I'm just so grateful I don't have their tick-problems...

Your friendly, neighbourhood crocodiles.

Memory is good, but short - some unidentified breed of antilopes at Schotia, with very special antlers.

Your average friendly faced lionesses. Difficult to grasp the fact that they're lethal, don't you think?

Not an uncommon sight at Schotia game reserve, zebras (and other animals) on the runway. Guess what, you land at your own risk...

All creatures, great and small - porcupine family at Schotia.

Safari, part III

Since Eurovision Song Contest is as far away as my cup of tea can possibly be - and M is occupying the sofa, the TV and the stereo "there's no shortcuts to the right sound" with that boring stuff - I thought I'd might *finally* come to an end with my safari-experience at Schotia and Addo.

So. Even if the encounter with the lions at Schotia was the best of the best of it all - apart from our little hut - we did see a lot of other animals there too. I'm a bit baffled about that Big Five-hype, I just think it's amazing and fantastic to be able to see almost any live and wild animal in its natural habitat... So no, I don't miss the fact that we didn't see a leopard in Africa, thus "only" the Big Four.

I don't even remember the names of all the wild animals we did see, apart from the rhino (only one, a sad, old one which left a pretty lonely and depressing impression...), there were lots of speedy ostriches, some crocodiles, blue monkeys (the ones that were really keen on making a lot of nice on our hut's roof during the night and early hours in the morning. Unfortunately too shy to pose for a photo at the veranda), zebras, giraffes, porcupines, different kind of antilopes... Oh yes and some extremly fast and dito shy surricates - I really love the expressions and poses of those "cats" and that's something I do miss we didn't get to take pictures of...

And at Addo we did get to see lots and lots of elephants really close. Did you know that elephants have a thing for citrus? Or at least the elephants at Addo, which have some sort of really addictive problem with citrus. They can sense the scent of citrus from far away and won't take no for an answer - so every bit of citrus is forbidden at Addo.

I think it was a wonderful experience, with very enthusiastic rangers. And you even got to do some interesting exercises - no I don't mean trying to escape from the lions jaws *she had a dream and it was Africa...* - but using muscles you didn't know you had while trying to stay aboard on top of the landrovers.

The only negative thing about it all was the food served at the lapa. Pretty boring and tasteless stuff, especially for vegetarians... Delicious small bread-things though and a fruitsallad at breakfast who was heavenly.

The picture uploading doesn't seem to work at Blogger at the moment - pictures will come later. Or for the extremly-can't-wait-interested one, follow the Flickr Badge to the right--->

Safari, part II

The warthogs at Schotia were pretty much everywhere, carefully curious little cute ugly animals. With hoards of cute ugly tiny babies. Behaving a bit like that lens-louse bird with Donald Duck showing on TV at Christmas in Sweden yearly, here, there and everywhere.

There was one more than ugly male one hanging around the lapa-area, I suppose he thought he could get some food-bits. Unfortunately I didn't get any picture of him, enormous tusks and a very hairy back. Maybe he's considered to be a real chick-magnet in the warthog-kingdom?

Safari, part I

One of the absolute best thing - apart from visiting the world heritage site of Robben Island - we did in Africa was the safari, at Schotia Safaris.

A private game reserve sharing fence with the vast Addo National Park, a bit east of Port Elizabeth. Schotia Safaris is the oldest private game viewing reserve in the Eastern Cape, owned, managed and run by the owners, the Bean family, since 1833 (now in its 6th generation).

This malaria free reserve has abundant over 15 antelope species, several smaller African animals, such as warthog, monkeys, genets, surricates and other larger African animals such as hippo, giraffe and rhino. Schotia was the first reserve in the Cape Province to have free roaming lions. At the moment there are five of them. It's not a reserve with the Big Five though, if that's all you want from a safari.

It was a fantastic experience, at first I thought it was a bit silly and touristic the whole thing - but after a while you actually was caught up in the ranger's enthusiasm over everything, great and small.

The best thing was being that close, five metres..., to wild lions. I'll never stop to marvel over the fact that they are just like our familycats in behaviour and gestures, just slightly bigger and lethal. Guess if I was a b i t annoyed about the fact that I really should have gotten a better camera for that particulary meeting... Mine, though as great as it might be in general and on closeups, just didn't give justice to the moment...