On Friday we travelled to Worcester, an hour's drive east of Cape Town, to a safari park called Fairy Glen. It was a very early start, but as the sun rose in the sky, burning off the mist, it became very warm.
Our ranger and guide was called Stewart. Here he is standing on a termite mound. He offered us termites to eat, but I think everyone declined. He said that termite mounds serve at least two purposes for those who are lost in the bush. Firstly, the top always points towards north (in the southern hemisphere) and secondly, a handful of termites can provide an emergency meal.
These tiny red-coloured any-like creatures have a minty taste and are very nutritious. I did get as far as having one on my hand but couldn't bring myself to eat it!
We saw many different types of antelope - this is a hemsbok. The long horns can grow over one metre in length.
This is an ostrich family. The male has black feathers and three females have brown feathers. There were also five chicks about two months old.
The Ostrich keeps laying eggs when they are taken away, thus supplying eggs for ostrich egg decorating, which is big business here. Ostrich meat is very low in cholesterol and delicious.
Giraffes are so graceful when they walk. They watched us the whole time. They have hair at the top of their ears, but the males usually rub the hair off, when they are fighting for dominance, so you can tell the males by their lack of hair on the ears.
There were lots of Zebras. These were black with white stripes. Stewart told us mountain zebras are white with black stripes. How do you tell the difference?
Did you know that Zebras have stripes, not to blend in with the trees or other plant life, but to make themselves look bigger to predators? A group of them blend into one, so that when the predator chases they then break up making one of them harder to catch.
The white rhinos were enormous and came really close to the truck. They have very poor eyesight, but excellent hearing and we noticed that the closest ear was always turned towards us, even when walking away. It seems incredible that such a huge creature lives solely on grass.
The African elephant has larger ears than the Indian elephant; each one having the same shaped ear as their name. In this photo you can clearly see that the left ear is the shape of Africa.
This was a wooden statue of an elephant at the entrance to Fairy Glen. It was carved by an unknown artist in Zimbabwe. The wood was also unknown, but had water constantly trickling over the outside keeping it from drying out in the sun.
A mountain leopard had devoured this hemsbok, leaving the carcas for the vultures and other carrion-eaters. Fairy Glen has six leopards with collars, but they have no control over where they roam or what they catch. They are immensely difficult to see; Stewart has only seen one in the last five months.
A four or five metre crocodile lay immobile in a pen near to the restaurant!
