11th Satara to Biyamiti continued
We stopped while still on the H1-4 a few km north of Satara for some ostrich, but the H7 didn’t produce much besides the odd usual suspect, ellies and buffalo, so we only stopped again for pics just after S106/H7 intersection where we found some dogs cooling off in the grass.
The dogs were only around 8m from the road sleeping, but the grass was long and one only got a reasonable view when a dog changed position, so I was keen to duck back to Satara in 5 minutes; however this got the Cow mumbling again, but I won the vote when it was put to the rats.
We stopped on the way back for a reptile Vin Diesel wannabe and a buffalo that was posing which had us all laughing.
We stopped at Satara for a loo break and then the rats were moaning for chow, so we wobbled around the shop which felt like forever before snacks of some sort were eventually chosen.
We left Satara around 10am so I was a little twitchy about the time; however I had seen a cheetah dot on the sighting board while the clan were farting around in the shop.
“Let’s just check 3km down the H6”
The Cow gave me a faulty look, but eventually agreed.
We hit the 3km mark and no action, but I got that “Just around the corner fever” and at about the 5km mark we found 2 cars stopped next to the road and some heads were poking up through the grass.
It was rather frustrating as minutes later the heads disappeared as the cheetah lay down, but we decided to hang around and wait for 10 minutes just in case as some zebra were getting rather close to them.
After 5 minutes I was cheering the zebras on “Move closer and make a scene”
“DAD!”
But the zebras spotted the cheetah minutes later and started to make a scene, which got the 1 cheetah up and charging straight at us and I got caught so badly by surprise that I nearly put my lens to my eye instead of the camera viewfinder.
“WT………..There she goes!”
The first cheetah, which if it was the mother it wasn’t a very good one, took off across the road ahead of the car in front of us and disappeared into the bush on the other side, but suddenly another 4 got up and started to cruise casually off.
2 walked off parallel to the road, a 3rd was injured and limping badly so it quickly fell a long way back and a 4th which the rats named “model” pulled in next to the road.
I was hitting a spin out as I didn’t know which cheetah to hang with so we took a few more pics of “model”, the one limping was still a long way back and the “mother” hadn’t reappeared, so we went off after the other 2.
After following along next to them for around 5 minutes the one suddenly went into stalk mode.
To be continued