What’s the first thing you think about when you think about adventures in Africa? SAFARI! Now, there are no true safari experiences near Cape Town. The next best thing are private game reserves, which are basically huge swaths of land that private owners put animals on and charge tourists to jump on a safari truck and go driving the property in search of “The Big 5” (which you’re never going to see at one of these places). What are the Big 5? Elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, and buffalo. Why are they called the Big 5? You might think because they’re the biggest animals in Africa. Nope. There are animals bigger than leopards, for sure. You might think because they are the most dangerous to people. Nope- Hippos (after mosquitoes!!) are the most dangerous animal in Africa. It’s because these are the most dangerous to hunt. I really don’t like that designation anymore… There were 3 of these experiences near (within a 2 ish hour drive) of Cape Town. Fairy Glen, Aquila, and Iverdoorn. I seriously couldn’t decide which one I wanted to do, so I decided to do two of them, based on location- Fairy Glen and Aquila.
When I’m talking about private land owners, we’re talking about a LOT of land- in Fairy Glen’s case, about 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres). We drove the hour and a halfish from Simon’s Town and arrived about 7:45am. Our package included welcome drinks, breakfast, 2-3 hour game drive, and lunch for 1590 rand ($128 US)- which is kinda steep. But I’m so into the animals, and I knew this would be my only chance to “safari” in Africa, so what the heck. Sometimes, you need to splurge! We arrived, signed our lives away, got our choice of orange juice or tea for our welcome drink, then had breakfast. It was buffet style with a decent selection- kind of bland, but edible. Not being ones that can sit still for 30 seconds to digest food, we headed outside to walk around and see what we could see. I found a cool little sunbird in a tree, and was super excited about that!
We all met outside at about 9am. We were to be split into two groups- one group for those who were staying on the Fairy Glen property (they have little cabins) and one for visitors. The guy making the announcements was pretty cool and seemed very personable and knowledgeable (and easy on the eyes, and a South African accent to boot!), so I was happy to learn that he was leading our group! He said the first thing we were going to do was feed and pet the elephants. Excited noises ran through our group. Huh? I’m not here to feed and pet elephants, I’m here to see them roaming “freeish” on 25,000 acres, doing their elephant thang! Well, apparently a large part of the reserve is being turned into vineyards, and the elephants are very destructive. So until they can be relocated further back at the foot of the mountains, they’re in pen. Sigh. Strike 1. Ok, I can get over this. Still a shot to bat it out of the park with me, Fairy Glen!! I really didn’t feel right about just feeding and petting them for the sake of doing it, so I refrained. But I will say this- compared to the Asian elephants I worked with at the sanctuary in Malaysia, these elephants are MASSIVE! Like twice the size of some of the Asians I worked with and I thought they were big! It was stunning and awe inspiring just how huge they were. I couldn’t begrudge Brian the chance to feed one though, since he didn’t get to go the elephant sanctuary with me.
Look at the size of this elephant compared to the guide!! (This was the other guide, not our guide)
After the elephant feeding, we all piled into one of those safari style jeep kind of things you see on TV. WOO-HOO!! Let’s go find some animals and get some great photos!! I made sure we got a seat right behind the driver/guide, Dennis, so I wouldn’t miss a word! Plus, like I mentioned, he was cute and it’s just fun as hell to get Brian all worked up about it! (evil girlfriend). And, of course, if you’re in the front you don’t have to see all of the tourists you’re actually on this trip with. Dennis gives us a bit of an introduction, during which he states he used to be a professional hunter. Ugh. Seriously? Look, we all have our own lines when it comes to being around animals- both those in captivity and those in the wild. And I get that some people hunt, and I don’t begrudge it. But trophy hunting (when not necessary to cull populations) crosses my line. Waaaaaaaaaaay over my line. Brian said he could see my face fall and completely change with that revelation (and I know he was secretly happy because he knew this guy just hit my shit list, cute or not!). Strike 2, Fairy Glen. Still a chance to hit it out of the park though! Let’s do this! We headed up and away from all of the buildings and construction on the reserve, into the “wild”.
Expansive area, where no animals were. They were all down in the populated, busy area 🙁
We went into the “wild”, made kind of a loop, then headed back down to the busy and populated area of the reserve. Dennis pointed out zebras and springbok (yes, we saw them on the way in). It was hard getting shots that didn’t have signs of civilization in them… Then, Dennis gets out of the car and shows us a rhino midden- they poop in very specific places instead of just whereever like other animals. He broke some open and showed us how full of undigested grass it was- because the rhinos don’t digest much of what they eat. Fairly inefficient. He then pulled out a piece of grass from the dung and put it in his mouth, toothpick/redneck style- much to the whispers of delight and disgust from the tourists. I was neither delighted nor disgusted. I saw it for what it was- an obvious ploy to tourists. “Oh my goodness- did you see that man put something that came from animal poop in his MOUTH?!!”. Sigh. We went a little further, and Dennis gets out again. He gives this long speech about the games they used to play in South Africa, and one was spitting shit. Yes, spitting shit. He picked up some smallish oval shaped poop (probably from some kind of antelope), puts it in his mouth, and chews it like gum- all while explaining how you had to chew it up and make it really sloppy so it would go further. The ooos and aahs and gasps of delight/disgust from the masses behind me was grosser than what Dennis was doing. He then takes a couple of steps and spits it out as far as he could. Guess what? I’m not impressed. Not in the least. It seemed like some kind of ego/give the tourists something to tell their friends ploy. It seemed contrived and gratuitous- neither of which I tolerate very well. I’m here and paying a lot to see ANIMALS, not watch some guide chew up shit. Foul ball, Fairy Glen…foul ball.
We drive a little further and there are some cape buffalo. The same ones, I think, that had been standing by the road when we drove in. Dennis goes on to explain just how dangerous these animals are. How they are demons. Then, he would open the driver door to try to get a reaction from the dominant male. I got the feeling that he was trying to strike some fear into the hearts of the masses and make it more exciting (jokes had already been made about how many people would make it back from the tour. Sigh.). Just SEEING these beautiful and massive animals was exciting enough! If you aren’t going to give me hard facts and teach me something, shut up and let me take pictures. Sheesh. While I’m sure these animals are quite daunting in the wild, these guys just wanted us to leave them alone. I couldn’t blame them.
So at this point, Fairy Glen has 2 strikes and a foul. We pull up to a lion enclosure (lions were literally the one animal we didn’t see either as we were driving in to the lodge or driving out of it). There were 2 females and a beautiful male. Dennis said he had hand raised the male. It made me think back to those breeder farms I had learned about yesterday at Panthera. The male was right up against the fence in a pretty awkward position to get good pictures. If I hadn’t have had the little display screen on my camera that allows me to see what the camera sees without having my eye to the eyepiece, I never would have gotten a shot. Can’t have that, apparently. Because Dennis goes back to the truck, gets a bottle of water, and proceeds to dump it on the male, agitating him to make scary faces and move. I was just in shock. Literally, in shock. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I just wanted to leave the entire reserve at this point, but Dennis tells us to follow him around the fence. The lions had all moved there to a) get the hell away from us and b) get into some shade. We all get over there, I’m still trying to process what I had just seen, and Dennis gets a stick and starts prodding the male with it. ENOUGH. I told Brian I wasn’t going to stand there. I stormed off and Brian followed. We went back to where the jeep was and I was crying angry tears, with poor Brian trying to console me. I’m here to witness these animals in some assemblance of the wild. I’m not here to watch a guide poke, prod, and agitate them for the thrill of it! Strike fucking three, Fairy Glen. You are OUT (of line). And if I could have walked back to my car from here I would have been gone. But we were in the reserve area and it wasn’t safe. That experience put me in a funk for the rest of the trip. I dwell on those kinds of things. Maybe too much. But at this point, I was so over Dennis and Fairy Glen, nothing could have changed my mind.
This is the lion that the guide agitated. 🙁
And things didn’t get much better. Dennis referred to the ostriches we came across as “stupid animals”. Ok, I fully understand that ostriches aren’t the brightest bulb on the bird tree, but to call them stupid…it hit me the wrong way. There are better ways of saying it without being so degrading and egotistical. Stupid compared to what? Ostriches survive into old age in the wild without a gun. Could you do that, Captain Superior Dennis? Doubtful. So really, who’s stupid? Stupid is relative. And after what I had just seen Dennis do to that lion, I’d put my odds on an ostrich’s brainpower over Dennis’ at this point. Next up, wildebeest! And guess what? According to Dennis, they too are “stupid”. If this guy didn’t shut up soon, I was going to get ugly. I could feel the words boiling up inside of me. I thought they were beautiful, and they perfectly serve their niche in the ecosystem. Dennis couldn’t even serve his niche as a kind and compassionate tour guide. So again, who’s stupid?
NOT stupid. Beautiful and curious.
Now, for the only really “wild” thing I saw at Fairy Glen. Two male springboks were fighting! It was really interesting to watch this behavior play out in front of me. Well, kinda far away from me and behind some bushes, but I could see it happening! It was a very “Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom” moment for the little girl inside of me! We watched them for quite a while, then moved on.
This next story is where Dennis almost redeemed himself, but not quite. It’s the story of Lady and Higgins- the male and female rhino that live on the reserve. Someone had snuck on to the reserve several years back and poached their horns!! They were found near death the next morning. Rhino poaching is a SERIOUS issue. More than 1 is killed per day in Africa, with their horns going to the Asian “traditional medicine” (I said it yesterday and I’ll say it again- traditional BULLSHIT) market. Of course, Asians who have weak minds, weak hearts, and weak dicks think rhino horns will fix at least one of those problems. Fuck. Seriously, how stupid can someone be in 2017?? Compared to an ostrich or a wildebeest, those Asians are far, far stupider… The story of Lady and Higgins was horrible, and you could see that Dennis was affected by it (nice to know there’s a heart under all that bravado). They almost died, but were nursed back to health. The owner of Fairy Glen even wrote a book about it. So now, not only are these the southern most rhinos in Africa, they are the only ones to have survived a poaching attack. They lost their horns, but not their lives…
This is Lady. They didn’t cut her entire horn bed out, so hers grows back. They remove it often though so it doesn’t tempt anyone.
This is Higgins. His entire horn bed (like your nail bed) was removed with the horn, so his doesn’t grow back. Numerous skin grafts to close up the hole into his nasal cavity. 🙁
Next we went to another lion enclosure, but these one we could drive into. There was a male and 2 females. Dennis kept talking about how aggressive they are and how one of the females is such a “bitch”. Stupid. Bitch. Huh, funny cuz those are the exact two terms I had been thinking about for Dennis. (Can you tell I’m just over this guy?? Don’t torment and don’t insult animals around me.) We drove fairly close to them and looked at them for a bit. Dried skeletons of cattle carcasses and such were scattered everywhere. There wasn’t a lot of shade in this enclosure and nothing high for them to get up on. Sigh. And Dennis did his same “open the driver door to agitate the animal” schtick he had done with the buffalo.
We drove around some more, looking for the Elans- the largest antelope in Africa. We had seen them when we pulled into the reserve. They are stunning! And it’s that big flap of skin under their neck that the San people used to make flip flops with!
It was time to head back, and I was glad. I had a cloud over me ever since the incident at the first lion enclosure, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to leave this place. We went in, got our buffet lunch (again, a good variety, but really quite bland). We sat upstairs by ourselves. Dennis walked up and handed me the book the owner had written about Lady and Higgins (the rhinos). I thanked him. I don’t know if they give that book away to everyone on the tour (if so, that would be a lot of books to hand out every month!), or if he knew I was displeased with this whole experience and was trying to make it up to me (I know it was all over my face- I don’t hide things too well). Either way, I’ll look forward to reading it. It was now time to drive a little over an hour to Aquila, and I was dreading it totally. Had it not been prepaid, I would have skipped it and gone back to the house. In fact, the idea that this place was only 995 rand ($80 US) was scaring me. Cheaper (and by a lot) than Fairy Glen probably meant the experience would be a lot worse…
The drive was beautiful (as is the majority of what I’ve seen of South Africa!). Huge mountains, vineyards. We pulled in and I immediately cringed. This was a resort. Everything screamed “If you want to visit Africa, but want to live in your bubble from home the entire time, you’re in the right place!”. Yes, I’m judgmental. But it’s my blog and I write about how I feel. And I HATE places like this. Froo-froo registration desk. Froo-froo restaurant. Froo-froo swimming pool. Froo-froo bar by said swimming pool. Froo-froo white people running around in froo-froo clothes saying and doing froo-froo things. UGH. Already hated it. We were early, so we sat down. The views (as long as you could keep the tourists out of them) were pretty amazing. We met at the meeting point at 3:30pm for our Sunset Safari tour. A guy and girl boarded, and she starts in with all of her fake fear to impress the boyfriend, “Oh my god! I can’t do this! I’m so scared! I don’t want to die! Oh, I just can’t do this!”. Good. Then get the fuck off this truck and do us both a favor. PS: As much as I hate froo-froo resorts, I hate fake ass girls even more. But this was exactly that kind of tourist sheep behavior Dennis had been playing into earlier. Sigh. The truck was full, and we started off. My expectations and excitement level were super low. First stop were HIPPOS!! They were in a huge pond quite a ways away, and in the water. I took about 30 pictures and only a few even turned out. How awesome to see them, though!
Can you see the hippos WAAAAAAY out there??
The guide was good. I mean REALLY good. He gave us so much information about every animal! Now THIS is what I wanted. In the distance, we could see these 2 massive creatures roaming “free”. Elephants. We drove up the road and they were in it. And they weren’t real pleased with us being there. They started walking toward us, and the guide just slowly backed up the truck to give them their space. Watching these animals cross, and walk off toward the hippo watering hole was just amazing. Aquila is about the same size at Fairy Glen (10,000 hectares, 25,000 acres), but it feels so much more wild. So much more remote. You can’t see buildings and construction and signs of civilization everywhere. In fact, for the vast majority of the trip all you could see was “wild”. I told Brian I was liking this place much better!!
Heading toward the jeep. MUCH better than handing them carrots over an electric wire!
Next, we saw a rhino. WITH her horn! And not only with her horn, but with a nursing baby as well. Awwwwwww! Brian asked about how they insure their safety (from poachers). The guide said there was security everywhere, and we couldn’t even see it. I asked how many rhinos were here. He wouldn’t say, in order to protect them. Nice.
See the baby nursing?!!!!
We saw more elan, zebra, and wildebeest. The guide said that the zebra and wildebeest hang out together. That when it’s time for a crocodile infested river crossing, the zebras know the wildebeest will cross first. It was a way of saying wildebeest aren’t as smart as zebras in this circumstance by pointing out how they interact in their environment. Not by labeling them as “stupid” and feeling smug about it. Nice! We came across three more rhinos, just hanging out near the road. And with horns. So innocent and beautiful.
Then it was time to see the lions. Lions at both parks were kept in separate enclosures within the reserve, and I understand that. But this enclosure was MASSIVE!!!!! So much bigger than the enclosures at Fairy Glen, and the enclosures at Panthera. You literally couldn’t see the fence line from end to end it was so big. And there were big rocks (high places) for them to get up on! We didn’t drive right up to them like we did at Fairy Glen. We kept a large distance and admired them from afar. No wonder lions are called the kings- they are truly majestic.
Truly the king. Coming face to face with that in the wild….damn. The power is palpable.
We drove out of the lion enclosure on the opposite side. I really couldn’t get over how big this place was. We had stayed in such a tiny area of Fairy Glen. Here, we drove and drove and drove. We saw an Oryx, and then the guide asked if we could see the thing waaaaaaaaay out by the bush. I couldn’t- it was too far away. He said it was a giraffe. I zoomed, and indeed it was!
Can you spot the giraffe???
Only with mega zoom!
We stopped at a little rest area for drinks and snacks, then headed back. I was feeling so much better about the day after experiencing Aquila. So now I’m going to leave you with two parting thoughts:
1. If you are in Cape Town and trying to decide which reserve to go to, go to Aquila- HANDS DOWN. Yes, it adds an hour to your drive (one way). But it’s cheaper, it feels more wild, the guide we had was so much more informative, the animals are respected, and you get all the animals you get at Fairy Glen, but with hippos, oryx, and giraffes as well!!
2. I will never do a private game reserve tour again. Even though Aquila was a better experience, overall, it’s not for me. Neither tour mentioned anything about conservation (except for rhino poaching), which bothered me. These aren’t sanctuaries, but some conservation sentiment would have been nice. Plus, I want to see these animals truly in the wild – not dependent on humans for food. My next such outing will be a real safari (Brian and I are already researching).