Another day of sleeping in late, missing yoga and almost missing the trip, repeat of Day 3, pretty much. I was excited as today we had discovered that we could experience wildlife safari close to Cape Town. Since we were visiting South Africa without kids, we had taken a conscious decision of not doing and safari on this trip and we would come back to Kruger or Sabi Sabi later in life with kids. But when we found out about Aquila Safari which is just two hours away from Cape Town, we couldn’t resist and headed there.
Now I must clarify, this safari is only good or people who have or are not planning to visit the bigger safaris of the world like Kruger and the one in Tanzania. The number of animals in the safari are few. When we visited there were 2 elephants, 5 lions,2 rhinos , 2-3 zebras and we got to see 2 buffalos (then there are quite a few ostriches and springboks).
You are driven around in an open van by the guide. The guides coordinate amongst themselves and follow the trails of the animals and guarantee you a visual of all the big five.
There is also a quad bike tour, helicopter tour and you could stay overnight in the reserve’s cottages. Also, although they’ll say that you get to see the big five, truth is that the only leopard you see is caged at the Rescue Centre.
The lone leopard in the cage
Our guide actually held Rhino Poo in his hand!If the Poo is here the Rhino will be closeby!
You could go to the extent of saying that it is like a glorified zoo. However we had a great time as we did manage to see many animals up close and personal. It was fun to watch elephants fight for food and scary to see the lions so close. Interestingly there were two lions in one pride, which as you know is unusual.
It was fun watch them fight!
And we found the Rhinos!
Before the safari we were served lunch which had an interesting mix of game meat and vegetarian food. The whole experience along with the two and fro drive takes more than half a day , four hours for the drive and 1.5 hours of safari and some time for lunch. We headed back much happy and satisfied with the experience.
And Finally the King of the jungle!
And his queen!
The pride of Lions
Beautiful landscape at Aquilla Safari!
After much activity from the previous days, I wanted to relax and so I booked myself on my Day 5 in Cape Town to this day spa called the ‘Mangwnani Spa’, which means ‘Good Morning’ in Swahili. Will share my review on my Spa experience in my next post…see you till then :)!
