Full day at Emdoneni, with animals galore!

Our first day consisted of a 9am semi-private cat tour.  The lodge is full of a tour group, and there fore there are only a few of us not within the group.  Us and 2 other couples did the cat tour. We all got to snuggle and cuddle with the Cheetah, Moya.

One of the greatest experiences of my life.  Absolutely nothing better than hearing the purr,feeling the fur and warmth of a gigantic, magnetic cat.  The most incredible thing to me is to watch the behavior of the large wild cats.  A cat is a cat.  They lick, purr, hiss, rub and head butt.  We got to spend time with the Cheetah, Caracal, African Wild cat, and Serval.

The Serval is by far the softest coat.  In my interaction with the sweet Serval, he was rubbing and head butting me, then a hard fast stream of pee came fit out of his butt.  I luckily dodged it, but he was trying to claim me as his territory.  it was awesome!

I had little fear facing these cats and I felt I got a great interaction with them.  Casey also had a fun time playing with the big cats.  It really is taking all my will power to come home from here, as this was absolutely my dream,and I could do this all day every day.  If I could lead the cat tours, what a dream job! This will be something I remember for my entire life time.  During our visit with the Cheetah we saw the Zebra begin to gather by our cottage.  It was the beginning to an amazing couple of days.

After the cat tour we walked around the grounds finding Zebra and Impala.  It was awesome to walk around with them.  

Then we came back to rest, take showers in our outdoor shower and head out on our first game drive. We were so lucky to have a private tour of Hluhluwe game reserve.  Our guide was Vernon, and he has been a guide 16 years, at many reserves.  It was clear by his save the white rhino bracelet, his love and knowledge of the white rhino, this is a passion of his.  He taught us all about the white Rhino, as we first came upon 4 right on the road, as we entered the park.  W watched them graze calmly, watched some of the pecking order happen,and admire the long horn on one of the females.  You would think when I say white rhino, it is white in color, but this isn't so.  They look exactly the same as the black rhino, they just are docile grazing creatures.  Where as the black rhino is aggressive and eats from trees and bushes. There are so few white rhinos left in the world, they will be extinct in 12 years at the rate they are poached.  So sad.  We got our fill of rhinos for sure as we saw them many times throughout our drive.  We also came upon warthogs, monkey, a zebra group where one had clearly been recently attacked by a lion, as the scars on his rump were fresh. As we were leaving we saw a whole family of baboons, probably over 30 of them playing, grooming, eating, and walking to their fig tree where they spend the night.  It was awesome to see the babies playing, wrestling, and chewing paper and rubbish they found on the road.  It was quite a site I will never forget.  We saw giraffes in the distance, and a gigantic herd of buffalo.  It was fantastic.  The views were tremendous, it he park of rolling hills, and trees.

We arrived back home in time for dinner, which was great, with roasted chicken, veg, dessert.  It was very high quality food.  We headed back to our room soon after to get some sleep before our next game drive at 530am the next day.