Botlierskop Game Reserve

Located about 214 miles from Cape Town is Mossel Bay (“the bay of mussels”), a harbor town of around 150,000 people.  The town is featured in the Guinness Book of Records as having the mildest all-year climate, second only to Hawaii. It has 37 miles of white sand beaches and boasts the longest zip line in the world that carries you across the ocean.

For today's excursion, 3 bus loads of us were driven about a hour away to visit the Botlierskop Game Reserve. The Reserve covers more than 16 square miles and is home to 4 of the "Big Five" animals of South Africa (no leopards). We learned a lot about animal behaviors in the wild. We couldn’t have asked for prettier weather (not hot, not cold) or a more interesting experience. If you’re on FaceBook, you can see more photos that I took there, but if not I will post some of my favorites here.

Keep in mind that we were not as close as some of these photos may appear. I was using my 40-150mm lens (which helps a lot, but there are much longer lens than that). Even so, I could enlarge enough to see flies on the lions faces!

 

Botlierskop Game Reserve

Welcome

deck of Welcome Center

we loaded into 4x4 open air trucks

our guide and first elephant sighting

3 elephants feeding

check out those tusks

and those lashes!

brown & white zebras

ever wonder how a zebra scratches his back?

brown & white zebras have shorter legs

they feed close together - too many stripes confuse predators

It was a REALLY rough ride at times! We had to hang on to our seats - literally!

the reserve covers over 16 square miles

jokingly called McDonalds (see the "M" on backside)

female lion (lioness)

I was trying to nap!

King of the Beasts

2 sleeping lionesses

 

male approaching the lionesses

 

Yikes! He's looking our way!

nibbling on the tree tops

not often one gets to look DOWN on a giraffe!

pair of springboks

beautiful horns

nice view of reserve

one of several small streams we drove through

our guide explaining rhino dung and dominance

white wildebeest

waterbok

waterbok's rear says "follow me" to his friends

rhino closeup with dung on his horn (a dominance thing)

 

African white rhino

Only a female white rhino could be attracted to that! The dominance thing is about who can make the biggest pile of dung (our guide used a less technical word) so they go again and again on top of the same pile. This lets the "lesser" rhinos know not to mess with that one. If the lesser wants to challenge the dominant one, then he goes over and messes up his pile. Yes, the guide showed us this but I did not take a picture - ha! Then when the dominant one comes back and sees that his stuff is missing, he knows he is being challenged. And on and on it goes until dominance is established. Then the dominant one gets the girl. Don't tell me that God doesn't have a sense of humor!