August 17th 2017
After a short coffee ️und some cookies we left at 6:15am in the morning as we do every morning to watch the sunrise. Today our guide Eric had found a very special position for us: Sunrise with giraffe!
Among other things we also saw cheetahs today, including the cheetah Maleika with her two now larger cubs. A film by Matto Barfuss (Maleika) about them is just starting in the cinemas. We have seen it meanwhile with a lot of travellust and can recommend it very much.
When Maleika was younger, she was injured while hunting… which is usually fatal for a cheetah, as it can neither hunt nor defend its prey. But the rangers helped her by giving her some food and protecting her while feeding with the cars, so she was safe. But the consequence is that she still likes the jeeps and therefore likes to climb on the hood… …and her cubs learned this behavior as well. But they were not interested in our jeep and quickly disappeared again.
We later found a group of 5 male cheetahs who joined together to hunt more successfully. They are called the “fast five”.
In the afternoon we found the 5 cheetahs again and could hardly believe our luck, when they later started to hunt. It was impressive to see how they proceeded coordinated and what breathtaking speed they reached. The hunting target was a group of wildebeests. We were able to follow two hunting attempts directly one after the other. The first without, the second with success.
More pictures of the hunt can be found in the gallery and in my separate report - just click on the picture above.