2019-05-01 05:30 - Selene Brophy
The Addo Elephant Park, situated close to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, is fast gaining some welcomed attention thanks to its resident caracals.
The park which is about a third of the size of Kruger National Park, is better known for its elephants - given the name. But two recent incidents show, it is a prime spot to experience the wonders of SA's natural heritage.
First, Jeni Williams captured the usually nocturnal creature in a split second shot, after spotting it alongside one of the roads in Addo.
See the full selection of pics here.
And not too long afterwards, Malcolm Benson of Sunningdale in Cape Town got in touch to share these darling images of baby caracals - also spotted recently in the park.
Benson says it was a "lovely surprise as we had only fleetingly seen them twice in all the years of visiting our National Parks". They have been visiting the park for about 30 years.
"The two kittens emerged from the bush and we were over the moon with excitement. We must have watched them for a good 15 minutes when a car approached us and the family of cats disappeared into the bush."
Caracal cubs spotted in the Addo Elephant National
(Photo: Malcolm Benson)
(Photo: Malcolm Benson)
Benson says, "When we left camp at around 08:00 on that morning, we stopped at the camp gate and spoke to the lovely lady who mans the gate at Main Camp.
He says she told them lions had been sited on the Zuurkop Road and they soon headed in this direction.
"We were ambling along this road when we saw something in the road a little way ahead of us. We slowly approached it and saw it was the caracal."
Benson shares how they had seen caracals on a visit to Mountain Zebra National Park, also in the Eastern Cape, during a previous visit.
Benson confirmed as an avid bushwhacker, he has a host of SA's 18 other national parks on his radar.
"As we now live in the Cape we frequent the National Parks near us as much as possible, and Addo was the one chosen this time. We would like to visit Addo more often but there are other parks which we would like to visit as well."
"We saw the resident caracal fleetingly as we arrived at camp, and in the Kalahari Gemsbok Park we saw one run into the bush as we approached Nossob Camp."
Dare we call him the caracal whisperer?
But despite being lucky enough to have spotted this usually elusive creature on more than one occasion, as an avid bushwhacker Benson says, "Words cannot describe how beautiful it was to see them (the baby caracals) and to have them to ourselves, was an extra bonus."
Addo is a park for personal and more solitary wildlife sightings, if these two accounts are anything to go by.
