Johannesburg - It’s early summer in the bush, so there are baby animals everywhere – Bambi-lookalike impalas, their umbilical cords still dangling; feisty little warthogs, trotting along behind their mothers in single file, tails up; recently born wildebeest and every other kind of furred, whiskered and feathered baby in between.
As a visitor to the bush, this cornucopia of young life is a delight to behold – nature at her most bountiful. But it’s not so good if you are potential prey, because this is also predator paradise time.
This is the season of instant takeaways – mouthwatering munchies for lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, jackals, wild dogs, plus all the smaller yet ferocious hunters like the serval and caracal.
I’m staying at Cheetah Plains in Sabi Sand, the private game reserve bordering Kruger Park. Sabi Sand is known to have the highest density of leopards in the world – you’d be very unlucky to go to any of its private lodges and not spot this elusive cat. But four different leopards on one evening game drive? That’s a record for even an old bush hand like myself.
Cheetah Plains is owned and run by Jaci van Heteren, the woman who almost singlehandedly put Madikwe Game Reserve on the local and international map, the driving force behind Madikwe’s well-known Jaci’s Lodges.
Cheetah Plains is a delightful, unpretentious, friendly little lodge consisting of eight brick and thatch cottages, each with their own viewing deck, and colourful, comfortable public areas that overlook a big dam in winter – a magnet for elephants and all other kinds of game.
But now it’s summer, and there is plenty of surface water everywhere, so at the moment, a couple of bushbuck, an African fish eagle and some water birds have sole occupation of the dam.
A couple of strands of elephant-high electric fence surround the camp, but we are warned never to walk alone at night, and even in the day, to keep our eyes open, because leopards are frequent nocturnal visitors, preying on the bushbuck that nibble near the cottages.
My friend, Gail, from San Francisco, has been to the bush before, but only had glimpses of leopard on previous occasions. They are notorious for lurking in deep bush.
Not so on this game drive.
Gail and I are alone in an open safari vehicle with Andrew Kosa, our experienced and knowledgeable Shangaan ranger
On our game drive the previous evening, we had spotted the Big Five – buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino – in less than three hours.
We’d told Andrew we were chilled, he didn’t need to worry about scooting around to find the Big Five – we were just happy to be in the bush and take what came.
But a small herd of breeding elephants, two white rhinos, two old dagha boys (buffalo), a pride of five lions, and a solitary leopard lying under a tree decided to show themselves.
So now, on the next night, as we start our evening game drive, we are not really expecting to top the previous night’s experience.
Wrong.
We hear kudus bark from the other side of dense thicket. “That’s a warning leopard bark,” announces Andrew. We drive off-road (ah, the joys of bundu-bashing) and as we bounce along, a young male leopard crosses in front of us and walks stealthily through the bush as he begins his evening hunt. He poses briefly on a rock before going deep into impenetrable bush.
Back to the sand road and far in front of us, Andrew spots three distant shapes padding along – a female leopard with two 14-month-old cubs. As we approach to within a few metres, the mom takes off to go hunting. The two young ones are not yet ready to hunt on their own and need feeding.
However, they do climb on to a handy termite mound, and like feline supermodels, pose for us in the late afternoon sun, only padding off as darkness begins to fall.
Gail and I take dozens of photos and then, knowing we have some shots of a lifetime, just sit quietly with Andrew, as the cats preen and pose, now and again looking straight at us with their golden-green eyes. The only sounds are doves cooing, a francolin calling noisily, a woodpecker tapping away, and the evening frog chorus.
As we head back to camp, at the place where Cheetah Plains borders Kruger and MalaMala, we find two big lionesses waking up. They yawn, wash their whiskers, nuzzle each other affectionately, and then decide to lie down again as if the moment for hunting has not yet arrived.
Did we see a cheetah? After all, the lodge is called Cheetah Plains.
Yes, on our last evening, we spotted a beautiful female making her way over the plains through long grass. We followed her for a while, then she kindly stopped to rest a metre away from the vehicle, panting in the evening heat, providing us with yet another amazing photo opportunity.
But that’s my philosophy about the bush – you never know what’s round the next corner. It may be a leopard, a cheetah, a dung beetle, a nightjar or just the smell of wild sage. It’s all about being there.
l Contacts: www.cheetahplains.com
www.sabisand.co.za, www.fedair.com - Sunday Independent