September is a good moment to visit Hermanus. One of the big attractions is the whales watching. From the rocky shore or a coffee shop, all locations are fine to see some whales.
From time to time, you can be lucky when they do their breach or a full whale dance.
I saw a lot of wild monkeys over the world in my life. One of them is the gelada baboon or bleeding heart monkey. They life on the highlands of Ethiopia and are the last surviving species of ancient primates in the world. If you don’t count humans. Maybe I went to close for one of them, when he started to show some teeth and his mate was standing in a boxing position.
A few seconds before we were going to lose our bumper of the car. A car that we just rented the previous day. Well in that blink of time, we saw these elephant group coming towards us. The big mom in the middle, was making noise like hell… and a scary female driver sat next to me. Luckily I made one good click on my camera.
In the morning cats are more active, because of the colder temperature. It is a good time to do some game driving. At a particular day in the Kalahari, we stumbled on a group of cheetah. Mom and 3 grown cubs, they are on a hunt. On the lookout for a group of springboks close by, one of the looked straight in to my lens. We followed the group for about 2 hours, but they failed to target and kill a springbok.
In one of my first self-drive safaris, I bumped on this magnificent creature. A prime male, that was controlling its territorial borderline. He passed my car in a couple of meters away. He stopped and looked at me and the car. Sure not impressed at all, because I was driving a VW Polo and not a big 4×4. Anyway, after 10 seconds he continued his walk and disappeared fully in the long dry grassland of Kruger National Park.
You don’t need to watch movies or series to see a real dragon in your life. Just instead go to the more east side of Indonesia. They don’t have wings or shooting fire out there mounts, but they are dangerous.
Real predators and king on the islands of Rinca, Komodo and Gili Motang. Hunting down deer, pigs and water buffalo. The older ones even eat their own kind if they are still young.
They saliva is not what kills there victims. Rather it is there venom gland. Releasing poison by every bite the make, just like snakes.
And they are big, real big… a 100kg strong muscular animal of around 3 meters. Sometimes slow, but able to run fast if they want. More fast then the average human on earth.
So that is why I went all the way down there to see them with my own eyes.<br>Taking a fast photo on the way of these Komodo dragons.
At a calm evening under a red sun in Sossusvlei camp, this happy looking gemsbok was grazing. It all happened just in front of our tent. So it took no effort to take the camera out and capture this photo.
Amazon is not only an online bookshop, but also the second longest river in the world. We went in the Peru section of the rainforest, seeking for what is maybe the strongest cat in the world… the Jaguar.
We had no success of spotting that animal, but instead Yujie had her wish came true… seeing a Sloth. And yes, they move slow but cute !
Here is a photo I took when we visited Etosha National Park in Namibia.
They have this great population of black rhinos there. They are actually very social animals who gather around the waterholes in the late evening.
Now we wonder because of the Covid-19 virus, Eco tourism is fully collapsed. Do they still get their protection? National parks and private game reserves need this tourism to get able to keep their day-to-day activities ongoing. Including keeping wildlife safe and especially avoid poaching.
South Africa is home to more than 80% of the world’s rhinos. And most of the poaching taking place in Kruger Park where I saw last year not a single rhino on our visit. That was very sad to experience it. Especially during our visits before, we almost got bored of seeing them.
Anyway, let’s hope for the best !
These cute little elephants stay close to their mother, for milk and protection. Protection against elephants bulls, lions… and safari vehicles.
We can tell you, mothers can act very aggressive to what they cross on their path. We lost our vehicle bumper in an attempt to escape from a elephant group with these cute little babies.
So here I am, trying to do my very best. Putting the bumper back to place with some cable ties from the local handy store.
It’s Yujie her second favorite animal to see in the wild, the giraffe.. it’s my favorite animal for dinner in the evening. They are really good steak meat especially with Belgian fries and beer. Now I know why lions like to hunt them.
Here they are drinking in pair at a water stream in Etosha National Park. We really enjoyed our stay here. For sure we will visit it again in the future.
Today is the World Wildlife Day, it reminds us that we have a lot to do and need to remember that we are not the only master of the world.
To see this African wild dog group is a matter of luck. The alpha female had a chain round her neck, with her offspring, they were resting in the bush. Due to habitat fragmentation, human persecution and disease outbreaks, the number of wild dog declines very fast.
Let´s hope the next generations can still enjoy seeing this “painted wolf” in the wild.
I love this lion a lot, maybe because we had an one side connection for a moment? So here is another photo of this magnificent animal.
Here is a snapshot from another 4×4 car that cross our path in the Kalahari Transfrontier Park. We were happy because we got stuck in the deep soft sand for 1 hour, looking at a lion in the shade.
The other 4×4 car was going to pull us out and we could go further with our journey! Right?
Nope, because at that moment the lion decided to come to our car and just start laying next to left passenger door. Not possible to fix the rope on our car to pull us out. So we decided to wait till the lion left.
We had to wait again more than a hour till another 4×4 car came and give us a tip to create a small sandstorm by just spinning our wheels in the sand.
This made the lion leave, looking for a less dusty spot. But it gave us time to watch and enjoy hem, while he was relaxing.
