Hallo again!

I’m sure I won’t be posting as much when I start at UCT, but while my parents are here we’re doing a lot of touristy activities. Today we went to a game preserve that was close to Cape Town and did a mini “safari”. Most of the animals on the preserve were free roaming, except the Lions, as they would kill many of the other animals. The lions are allowed to roam freely in a large area that is then hemmed in by fences keeping them from the other animals. The preserve has a mixture of both rescue animals and some animals that are indigenous to the area. 

We saw so many beautiful things, but my favorite was the elephants. The preserve has two male elephants, around 26 years of age. The elephants were rescued by the preserve after some of their family was killed during a culling of elephants in an over populated area. When culling, it is necessary to kill an entire family of elephants at once, otherwise the remaining elephants can either die from depression (they are one of the only animals besides humans that mourns) or have behavioral issues and become “problem children”. The elephants that the preserve has were in the second group, and could not continue to be left in the wild with other elephants, as they would destroy others’ family structure. An interesting fact about elephants; they do not really die from old age (oldest elephant in captivity was 106) but they die from starvation. Elephants are born with 5-6 sets of teeth. When these run out, the animal starves. This is the reason that there are things like elephant graveyards. When they are becoming older and they only have a few sets of teeth left elephants will migrate to places where the grasses are softer and easier to eat, this helps their teeth last longer.

After the game preserve we drove back through the Stellenbosch wine region and stopped at a winery named Spier. Besides the wine tasting (the chardonnay and chenin blanc were divine), the property also has a cheetah sanctuary. There we got to pet an actual cheetah! It honestly was just like a very large cat that purred when it was petted. Cheetahs are one of the animals that is most endangered by urban sprawl in South Africa and one of the sanctuary’s goals is to educate the public about the loss of their habitat.

I absolutely love it here!

Xoxo,

Sara 

I'm petting a cheetah! It purred :) 

early morning at the game preserve 

Wine! 

with our ranger Abrie