October 18, 2009 - Of Elephants & Monkeys

We left ultra early to spend some time at the Elephant Sanctuary at The Crags. It was an amazing start to our day watching them march in daisy-chained together (tail in trunk!), with their caretakers on their backs!

The first thing we did was walk them into the forest by leading them by their trunks. The elephants were incredibly well-behaved, and they were adamant about making sure we had a good grip on the inside of their snot-filled trunks. eww, but cool.

We led them into a small opening in the forest where the caretakers lined the elephants up and began teaching us about natural elephant behaviours, while the elephants performed these behaviours on the spot!

Afterwards we were allowed to approach the elephants and were given a chance to see and touch the animals up close.

Then we walked them back to where they are fed some treats, and proceeded to fill their giant bellies with some melon!

Once it was decided that we had enough fun, our guide took us to the teaching area and taught us just about everything we would ever want to know about these beautiful beasts.

We would like to share some of the most interesting facts:
- 20 seconds to mate (males must be 26 years old first!)
- 22 month pregnancy
- 30 second labor
- right-tusked/left-tusked
- african vs asian
- 5 toes front/4 toes back vs 4 toes front/3 toes back
- jagged teeth vs small teeth
- female asian elephants rarely have tusks
- highly sensitive heel cushions which help detect natural movements ie tsunami and water pipes in Kruger Park
- 6 sets of teeth over lifetime - a natural elephant death is of starvation, but first they will drink only water for up to 9 months before the die, and they will be visited by family members for protection from lions and predators
- highly social, and family mourn a death for hours before moving on. They may return years later to carry the bones and remember the dead again
- non-tusked elephants are becoming more popular (currently 5% of elephants in SA don't have tusks) due to heavy poaching on the big tusked males. The gene is becoming extinct


We decided to have lunch at "Monkeyland", an enclosed jungle full of exotic primates! While we didn't want to do the full tour, we practically saw most of the monkeys from where we were eating inside the park. They tried to steal our food and even jumped on Sami when he tried to take one of them off of an elderly woman. Needless to say, good times had by all!

After monkeying around for a bit, we headed out towards Oudtshoorn to continue our way down the coast.

October 17, 2009 - Walking the Cheetahs

After Sami's newfound love for animal encounters, we signed up for a morning cheetah walk for today. We got there at 7:15 and met the staff and the other walkers over tea. We then met with Zulu and Duma, two 20-month old cheetah brothers. The guide put the harness on them, gave us the safety instructions and then we were off for the walk.

The cheetahs were very gentle, and enjoyed being petted and purred VERY loudly. In order to avoid the cheetahs from feeling constrained and running away, we had to ensure that they never felt any tugging from the leash. So it was very important that we always kept up with the cheetahs, which proved difficult when Sami's cheetah began to sprint down the path to catch up with the other one! Also, it is very difficult to "lead" a cheetah. Even the rangers are unable to direct a cheetah in one direction or another, you must simply walk alongside them and go wherever they want to go.

After our morning cheetah encounter, we headed back to the reception where another ranger brought in a baby leopard! It is EXTREMELY rare to see leopards, let alone get to touch them, so we excitedly ran up and petted it. In contrast to lions and cheetahs, leopards are very unpredictable, and where is is safe to let lion or cheetah cubs chew on your fingers, a leopard cub may decide to keep them as a souvenir (the ranger informed us of this fact while the leopard had Sami's fingers in his mouth)!

We were then taken on a tour inside enclosures where we had a chance to see a number of other lesser known cats up close, including the caracal, the african wild cat (from which all feral and domesticated house cats derive from), and also the beautiful spotted serval.

Finally, we were taken to the cheetah cub enclosure where we got to play with two 9-month old cheetahs!

On our way our we visited some of the rare birds they had in the garden.

After Sami managed to safely stick his hands in the mouths of lions, cheetahs, and leopards, it was a Maribou Stork that finally decided that Sami's fingers were lunch!

We also spent some time with the park's conniving little meerkat!

After a fun animal encounters, we headed back to Wild Spirit Lodge and took a magical hike through its forest all the way to a private waterfall pouring into a series of rock pools.

We also took some time to explore the beautiful Wild Spirit grounds.

The sweet owner of Wild Spirit, Jen, convinced us to join her and the other guests to have dinner at a diwali celebration happening in downtown Plettenberg. It was quite a random event, apparently with one family of Indians hosting hundreds of white hippies for a diwali party at their tiny Indian restaurant! There were lots of hand drums to play on, a meditation guide, belly-dancing, and even an impromptu fire show. Highly eclectic, and very entertaining! Certainly not what we expected to do in this small town in South Africa!