Viva Safaris - days five and six

Day Five - 19/09-2007
We started the day with a visit to the Moholoholo Rehabilitation Centre. This place is amazing! I have never seen a place oozing with such dedication and passion, where the people working there truly believed in what they were doing to the extent I saw it here... it was fantastic... inspiring...


Moholoholo is a place filled with sad stories. The first eagle we met, a black eagle, lost its wing after flying into a power line. Fortunately, it did not lose its life. It was one of the lucky ones. There were lots of stories like this. Too many...

The story that really made my blood boil was one about one of many eagles that can never ever be released into the wild again. It had been captured by some waste-of-space people who had pinned it down; one guy was cutting off its wing with the intention of keeping it as a souvenir! WTF?! I had tears in my eyes. And I was angry, as in shaking-with-rage angry. I wanted to find that useless bastard and pin him down and slice off his arm. And smack him with it. Oh, and keep that as a souvenir of course, sheeeeesh!

A bittersweet story that really touched my heart was the story about this beautiful female eagle (don't remember the species, crowned eagle I think) that was imprinted to think it was a human. When we first saw her, she was chirping really sweetly. Like a cute little songbird would chirp. One doesn't think that a big raptor can chirp like that, but wow! Our guide told us that she was chirping like that because it was mating season. And the object of her affection? Brian Jones, the man who founded Moholoholo. He told the story of this eagle and many others. Everyone on the tour just stood there, captivated, as he spoke. He's one of the most passionate people I have ever come across, which makes it understandable why this eagle fell in love with him...

It's very interesting to see how affectionate raptors can be, not just this one but a few others that we saw! They're really quite cuddly!

Brian and the eagle have been a "couple" for quite some time; being his mate she would lay eggs for him during breeding season. Duds, of course, but still. This and many other species of eagle lay two eggs – one that is going to be raised and the "spare." What happens is that the first bird hatches, and the second usually hatches a few days later. The first chick, who has grown considerably in that short amount of time, kills the second. The parents can only afford to raise and feed one chick. Someone got the idea that it would help bring the eagle population up if they took the second egg from a wild eagle's nest and switch it with one of the dud eggs in this eagle's nest. They had to get special permission to do this, but in the end it worked... the eagle managed to raise something like 6 or 7 chicks that were able to be released into the wild. That's so cool...

The best part of the whole Moholoholo experience, at least for me, was "playing" with the vultures. We were in a vulture enclosure with lots of Cape vultures, and our guide asked if anyone would like to hold a vulture. Immediately, I raised my arm and was all like "me! me! me!" So I got to put on a big leather glove, and the guide gave me a bit of meat to hold. Then suddenly, a bunch of vultures flew up on my arm to try to get the meat! Wheeeee!



The next best part was "cuddling" with a baby rhino. It liked being scratched under the belly and it had a rather soft belly! Our guide was the one who raised him, and in the process had to be with the baby rhino 24/7 and even sleep with the baby rhino. This resulted in facial injuries and the such (when the baby rhino rolled over on top of him in the middle of the night). Nonetheless, our guide was "mom" and when we approached the enclosure where the rhino was being kept, it started running over to our guide, like a puppy. Very cute :-)



Finally, we saw a some honey badgers and one of the workers gave a little talk about them before heading out...

We spent a lot more time at Moholoholo than planned, and had to inhale our lunch to keep on schedule. After lunch, we went on a bush walk in Kruger. With two armed rangers. We drove out to this remote area, and the moment we got out of the jeep, we heard rustling... looked around... and saw two big bull elephants! We walked some more and encountered fresh rhino dung (but no rhinos), giraffe, and a big herd of buffalo...



The buffalo were interesting. They noticed us, and at first kept their distance. Then one big male moved forward. And as he did, the rest of the herd moved forward. He moved forward again, and the rest of the herd followed. This went on a few times, while one of the rangers explained that buffalo can come as close as 10-15 meters to you. He said that while they can be quite dangerous, they were also the easiest animal to scare away. And he demonstrated this by jumping straight up into the air. The buffalo turned around and ran about 20 meters away. Good fun :)

Tonight's dinner was soup (oops, didn't write down what kind) and a braai (chicken and woers).

Day Six - 20/09-2007
Today was our last day at Viva Safaris. It was sad to be leaving (I was getting very attached to the treehouse and the nyalas), but at the same time we were ready for new adventures!

We started with an early morning bush walk. We didn't see much other than dung and lots of birds (yay!). Including a woodland kingfisher (double yay!). But no matter, it was nice to be up early and walk around. After breakfast, we headed back to Johannesburg.

We had a scheduled stop at the Blyde River Canyon, where we could see and photograph the river, canyon, scenery in general, and the Three Rondavels. It was very beautiful there. There was a bunch of vendors where we stopped, and I ended up buying a necklace. The vendors were somewhat pushy, but not obnoxiously in-your-face like in Thailand or Egypt...



We had lunch at The Flying Dutchman again, and we got the duck and cherry pie this time (one of their specialties) – also very tasty! We encouraged one of the other travellers to have the pan-fried trout, and she too thought it was wonderful :-)

We finally got back to Johannesburg around 4 pm or 5 pm and were dropped off at the car rental area at the airport... now it was time to get our rental car and drive to Harrismith!