Last Day at Entabeni

We started the day with yet another frigid 5:45 AM game drive.  Most of the kids in our group were a little worn out from the early morning schedule, so we had only about half of our group.  Compared to the game drive the kids had yesterday, ours was uneventful. 

However, the day picked up after that. At noon, we arranged a tour of some of the attractions in the reserve. First, we learned about the Pedi - one of the tribes in South Africa - and experienced a Pedi village recreation, some authentic Pedi food: a sweet and tasty beer, a delicious porridge, a bland sorghum mix, and best of all - dried caterpillars. I was the only one who enjoyed the caterpillars, which were nutty, and has a nice juicy squirt when you bit into them.  Most everyone else though them gross, and worthy of Fear Factor.  We also learned how the chief could have multiple wives, and how the village was arranged such that the chief and his wives had their own area of the village where nobody else - and especially not kids - were allowed.  It was all pretty interesting.

Bryce enjoying the traditional Pedi beer

Mason - not so sure about eating caterpillar

Next, we visited a white lion preserve.  Entanebi is a breeding center for white lions, and they are trying to help reinvigorate the breed and get them back to being in the wild.  Incredibly, white lions weren't discovered until 1975 in Timbavati (where we were previously).  When the first cubs were discovered, they were captured, transferred to the Johannesburg zoo, where they both died a few weeks later. Nevertheless, the breed is being bred and they are making progress at increasing their numbers so that they can be reintroduced into the wild.  Last year, just one white lion was born outside of a breeding center.  There are maybe a few hundred left in the world.

The white lioness of Entanebi

Our guide also explained the crisis with rhino poaching.  A lot of Asian cultures give magical powers to rhino horn, so much so that the single horn on a rhino can net $250,000.  Entanebi has had problems with poachers, and has several security gates coming in and out of the preserve to prevent poaching. Nevertheless, the poachers are still able to kill some rhinos every year for their horns.  The problem was exacerbated in 2010 when the Vietnamese Prime Minister's wife went on TV and proclaimed rhino horn as a cure for cancer.  The world-wide rhino population has gone from 480,000 in 1970, to approximately 18,000 today, as I recall our guide saying.

Next, we took a sunset drive up a ravine to the top of the mountains we can see from the lodge.  Once we got there, we saw yet another plain, with another peak (the Entanebi peak itself) in the background.  It was a gorgeous place to see a sunset.

Entabeni Sunset

That night, after yet another great feast of local pork chops and lamb, we went to bed and prepared for an early morning departure to our next destination.  Sue and I were awakened at 2 AM, and then at 3:30, by a lion roaring outside our tent. At least it seemed that way.  The lions had actually killed an impala behind our lodge that night.  Some of our party saw lion footprints on the path the next morning.  We were a little scared to walk from our tent to the main lodge at 4:45 AM in the dark, but we convinced Mark, one of our group who was in a neighboring tent, to come with us to improve our odds of not being eaten during the 60 second walk.

Ironically, our lodge was hosting a marathon that morning, with about 400 participants.  When we asked the guides what they planned on doing with the lions, they said that they always know where they are, and they can divert the course of the run if necessary.  Sounds risky to me.