Cradock, South Africa

We were up early at 6am to get ready for the cheetah tracking excursion at Mountain Zebra NP. The hotel had packed breakfasts for us, and we were on our way by 6:45am. It's only 12 minutes to the park gates (the excursion started at 7:30) but we weren't sure how far we had to go to after the gates.

We arrived at the entrance at 7am, just a couple minutes before it opened. We were amazed at how close it was to Cradock. It was then about 15 minutes drive on gravel to the reception, where we paid, and parked our car.

The reception person was pleased that all eight of us were on time. The cheetah tracking is limited to 8 per day - I had booked back in July. They track the cheetahs with GPS, and then you get out on foot to get even closer. We were lucky to have seen a cheetah in Sabi Sands so it was already checked off the list, but I didn't count on that back in July.

Paid about $100 CAD between the two of us, which included both the park fee and excursion. They even took credit card.

We piled into the safari vehicle. The ranger had a very short intro while putting together his tracking antennae, mentioning something about seeing a family of lions. Wait, lions? I hadn't read anything about lions!

First we ascended to a high point in the park, so that the ranger could try to get a signal. He waved his antennae about for a few minutes. All I heard was static but he seemed pleased to have a sense of where both the lions and cheetah were. Lions??

Lions were the last of the big five for us on this trip. We had seen lions when we were in Uganda, so had the career big five, but it would be nice to see them on the same trip.

We drove for a couple more minutes and then the ranger stopped and waved the antennae. This time I heard a beep beep beep!

A car drove past us in the other direction and chatted with our ranger, saying they had seen the lions about 200m around the bend. The ranger listened politely, and then drove 5m forward and then off-roaded around a large bush to our left. There were two male lions!!

We stopped and watched them. Then two females walked by to a tree about 50m away. While we were busy taking pics, the cubs strolled out from under the same bush. It was really cool.

The cubs posed for pics while the adults watched from the shade under trees.

Finally it was time to move on to find the cheetahs. The ranger said very dryly, that wasn't a bad start to the day. (We were only about 15 minutes in).

We drove slowly through the park to a slight depression. There laying by a watering hole were two cheetah!

The ranger gave a very short safety spiel, loaded his rifle, and then we got out of the vehicle and walked closer to the cheetah, to within 10m. The cheetah looked over at us with a bored glance.

Another couple cars pulled up (it's possible to do self-driving safaris, but you have to stay on the road and in your car). The ranger hoped they didn't join us down by the cheetah. Apparently some don't realize it's an organized excursion with a ranger with a loaded shotgun.

As it was they got out of their cars to take pics. We walked back to our vehicle and the ranger asked the other tourists if they were concerned about lions, black rhinos, or even the cheetahs? I don't know if they understood the danger they were in but they got back in their cars.

We had only been on safari for 1:15h and had checked off both the highlights! We drove around some more, saw some more game, but nothing as exciting as the three lion cubs.

The safari was 2.5h in total. We had breakfast in the restaurant at reception, then drove back to Cradock.

It was well worth the effort to get out to Cradock to do the cheetah tracking excursion. It's the 2nd time we've signed up for a GPS tracking and both were excellent. It's easy to find the game, and you can off-road while other tourists peer through the bushes.

Had lunch at True Living again. I had the Karoo lamb chops, grilled perfectly.

It was getting hot (high near 36C) and we had little motivation to see museums. Caught up on reading, edited and uploaded some pics, napped.

Had dinner again at the hotel, with three different Karoo mains. We were tired with the early start, and wanted to get on the road early tomorrow, and so were in bed by 9:30pm, still on safari time.