East London is our next-to-last stop in South Africa and is only a half-day stop in the afternoon. We believe it has been put on the schedule to accommodate our landing in Cape Town. We have to be there at a specific time and need to do something between Durban and Cape Town. There is really nothing much to say about East London except that it is home to one of Mercedes-Benz’s largest assembly plants. They assemble a lot of C-class cars out of here each year.

Our visit was a choice of either touring the town –oops, we blinked and missed half of it… - or going to a private game reserve. We opted for the reserve because it would be the last chance we would have to see large animals and would also give us a chance to see some of the South African countryside that we had not seen before.

Our visit to the Inkwenkwezi (ink-wenk-way-zee) Game Reserve was different from both our earlier Kenyan safari and our Hluhluwe-Imfolozi state-owned reserve visit earlier in the week. Inkwenkwezi is an area of about 4000-5000 hectares (about 10,000-12,500 acres) that was put together by two brothers about 20 years ago and has been in operation for almost as long. They are able to buy animals from the government when the government does annual culling or has an excess of any particular species that they want to keep, but relocate.

The current herd numbers several hundred impala, water buck, giraffe, ostrich, kudu, zebra, nyala (a type of antelope) wart hogs, rhinos, elephants, and lions. The lions are kept in a separate part of the reserve from the other animals and will be released into the main part when the overall herd grows to the point that the natural hunt-kill cycle of the lions feeding does not decimate the herd. We were told that the lions can kill as many as 500 animals a year, so they will need a few more years until they can combine the two types of species – preyer and preyee.

The natural vegetation is also quite different from that in Kenya and the more eastern part of South Africa that we saw in Hluhluwe-Imfoloz. It is wilder, that is, with more scrub and hills. Again, I can best illustrate our tour with a few pictures.

 

The elephants at upper left seemed not to mind each other, then suddenly one raised his trunk and the other one got into it with him. The bottom two pictures are of some of the herds of impala, kudu, zebra, and giraffe that we saw.

The highlight of this game drive was our visit to the lions. We were put through a sally port (a dual gate set up that only allows one gate at a time to be opened) and entered the lion reserve directly. The lions were most cooperative and lined up for photos and a few growls. It was really neat to be only about 30-50 feet from full grown lions, and a couple of really adorable cubs. I think that the females were a little squirrelly because we were so close to the cubs.

 

Upper left and inset are the two cubs - one white and one natural tawny. The mother on the lower right was a little nervous at our proximity.

We were in Land Rovers so we could get quite close to the lions. The vehicles do not bother them since they do not see the machines as a threat. People on the ground walking around are, however, definitely perceived as a threat. After we drove back through the sally port and dismounted from the vehicles, we could walk up to the fence (a chicken wire fence!!) and get to about within 10’ of the fence before the lions on the other side of the fence and only about 50’ away assumed an aggressive position. Cool!

 

This guy was in no mood to mess with interlopers. He has flattened his mane, brought up his rear legs, pinned back his ears, let out a low rumbling growl, raised his head just enough to see us over the grass. He wants us out of there - or else!

Our next stop is in Cape Town where we have two private tours scheduled and a day at leisure.

Stay tuned…