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Very majestic. Look at this guy. Welcome to Safari Plus. On this episode, we're taking you from the Eastern Cape to Kenya and back again. With incredible wildlife encounters, exclusive behind-the-scenes access, and a conservation story that you don't get to see very often. We're starting off in the Eastern Cape, where the elephants were feeling particularly playful, and the team found themselves in another very familiar situation.
Oh, everybody, I don't know what's going on this morning. These elephants have been uh doing some aerobics this morning. Look at that elephant in the road. I don't quite know. They've been doing some strange things this morning. I don't know if they've eaten some plant that they shouldn't be eating. I don't quite know what the story is there. But, something is happening here this morning. They just seem in a very different type of a mood. And I mean it. I'm not trying to make a joke or anything.
I don't know. It just seems like they're they're in a different place this morning. Look at this. This is quite something. Come on. You can do it. Pull. There we go. How cool. Jayden, uh there's a good chance, yes. Oh, here comes a round number two here. As one elephant goes out, makes space for another elephant. This is one of the taskless females. And she's a bit heavier than that last elephant that went in there. But yes, any elephant that you get stuck in here, you'd find that they would probably help. We have seen this before, here at Amakhala even.
Uh one of these young elephants fell into a swimming pool. And as quick as it fell in was as quick as it was pulled out by the rest of the herd. Oh, no. Come on. Please don't use our vehicle as a scratching post. I'm trusting you. Look what we managed to find. Got view of one of the two Amigos nice in the top of the open there. The second Amigo is just behind the tuft of grass. I'm not sure if you can see it, but he is there. Right, you hear me say the two Amigos. So, any first time viewers? All right, so these are a coalition of two male cheetahs. They named that the Well, they used to be called the three Amigos. There used to
be a third one. Unfortunately, lions managed to grab one of them and uh kill it. And so, we're left with two Amigos, but they are a coalition and these two will operate together. And they spend time together. These two Amigos, they got up to eating a blesbok. All right, so they did kill a blesbok sometime in the afternoon or sometime yesterday. And they've been here ever since. It might have been the day before. I'm not quite sure, but uh either yesterday or day before. But anyway, so a blesbok is quite a decent size antelope for them.
It's a bit bigger than a medium-sized antelope, little bit bigger. So, for the two Amigos, it's It's to be a very nice roaring kills or kill. It seems that Andrew is just not content with simply being a member of the Marshmallow Club. After getting stuck for the second day in a row, we'd say he's making a pretty convincing case for club president. Yeah, baby. Freedom. Okay, yeah. We've had some young buffalo running around here having a jolly time just burning off as much energy as they possibly can. I think yeah, these animals are quite comfortable given all the behavior that we've been seeing.
And then we have some others that have reached a stage in their life where they're trying to formulate some sort of dominant rank as well as the plan is to get fit and get strong so that when they become fully grown that they are formidable. It's almost like a scrum match over here. It's incredible to see this power. This is a really ferocious animal. Buffalo, their whole concept in their life is to stay alive. These animals are constantly being targeted by lions. Some sightings don't actually involve wildlife at all. In fact, the rarest sighting of the week comes out of the control room. Our camera-shy director and very deadpan humor director, Jared,
as well as Thulu and John prepare for the final checks before the show. Bring on solo. Enjoying the vitamin D. Everything sounding good, it's looking good. Shiv, happiness in the back? Always happiness, Shiv. Always happiness. Awesome. Let's do a delay count on three. One, two, three. We have an 11-second delay. We have 18 minutes until we go live. Our best of luck out there, guys, and I will chat to you in a little bit. Asante sana. Kwaheri, Jared. I would say it's not cold as much as the body language says it's very cold for them. But, these are cubs from the spotted hyenas. And I think we might have uh discovered another den, myself and Shiv.
It's those two cubs and there's one female to the left there. My only guess is possibly a female. Not sure it's the mother for these two cubs. So, Shiv, we need to pin this particular Look at that. I wouldn't want to say these could be two brothers or two sisters. You know, hyena cubs have a lot of similarity. We'll get one baby killing the other. And the love I see here is quite unusual. I mean, there's always a very big competition amongst the cubs. I'd guess these ones could be going to maybe close to two months because when they are born, they're always dark, pitch dark like charcoal, all black in color.
Starting our drive with a black rhino, which is also, I guess, is your second one, Shiv? This is the second one that she have seen here and this could be my very first one in the recent few months here in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. They have formed a very good friendship with the cattle egret there. Every time she moves she also moves. And we have seen her spray two times, actually three times since we first spotted this black rhino. Quite vulnerable currently when you look at the IUCN red list. Not sure they have been descaled from appendix one to appendix two.
The rhinos here in the Mara we leave without being monitored. Being monitored mean none of them will have tags on their ears or any chips. I mean they just leave naturally and when we see one it's very even difficult for us to tell the game rangers, you know, we have a sitting here, come here, we have a rhino here. We can only maybe call them by phones and tell them where we are, where we saw it. Now, this zebra was standing up a few minutes ago. She went down and not sure for what a particular reason and she has remained in that position for quite some time.
Is she having issues or she may be giving birth? What I want to do is to look closely but under her tail and see whether I can see any sign of giving birth but you can tell she's quite uncomfortable. I think I'm going to try to wake up. Well done. She's up. But still not very comfortable. And sometimes the sightings are so exciting that our own crew needs to stop what they're doing and tune in. As I might have guessed, this female here is just about to give birth. And what you have noticed the last few minutes, we have seen how many contractions she's maybe three, four. As you see, with every move, she is uh pushing harder and harder. And uh definitely uh more contractions going on.
Mama, I know you're young. Possibly is your first time. But you have only one choice. To give birth. Keep pushing. It's a very, very beautiful morning here in the Mara. I feel I have a lot of energy. Short grass here. That's why you see all the zips here, the Thomson's gazelles, the pigs. Just because this grass is short and lush. We have seen huge herds of zebras headed towards the Mara River. Crossings don't have a time. They could cross in the morning, midday, evening.
We haven't seen proper, proper migration of the big herds of the wildebeest, but every day that passes, uh getting closer and closer to us. One huge majestic boy here. Not sure what plans he got uh with us. He's a huge male. Around the marsh area. He's just coming straight to where we are. And my escort is always to stay put. Don't try to chicken out. Chances are he'll just come and then turn away. And I just saw it. He's definitely coming from the marsh and you can see he got different colors, uh you know, dark with the black cotton soil from the marsh area, but he's
definitely dripping. I have seen the urine coming out and as much as I'm not smelling any marsh in him, he is definitely in marsh. Big boy he is. That's clear sign of an ellie that is in marsh. When they pose like that, stop in the same place he's been because of where we are. Yeah. We can now clearly smell the marsh himself and shiv. And thank you, sir. No, not sure what's wrong with this particular youngster here. I'll just say she is just full of life. Oh. Now, this particular calf, not sure what. Wouldn't say she has taken anything.
I mean, you would imagine. I don't know. If I go back to that age I mean, imagine she could be a couple of months. Definitely less than 1 year. And she's just full of life. If I would go at that age, I would want to behave like this particular calf. If I was offering any awards to the animals out here in the Masai Mara she would get the first prize. This is proper entertainment. Mambula certainly stole the spotlight this week. I might be a little bit biased, but we had elusive predators and one super fascinating conservation story that most people don't ever get to witness.
We managed to get a slightly better view of the cheetah. They've gone on to the main road now, which is obviously much easier for us to follow. So, if you look, can you see the one on the left? Looks smaller than the one on the left on the right. When I first saw them a couple weeks ago, uh a couple months ago, it was very obvious the smaller one and the bigger one. And now there isn't really a big difference in their size. So, remember the colored one is Kutleka, the uncolored one is Isaka. And one of these two is the dad of Queen's cubs. I wonder if she feels stress um when the boys come along. I wonder if it's what we're interpreting as stress or it does she already know these boys?
It would be more stressful if she didn't know them. I'm 100% sure it would be more stressful if she didn't know them. That's all we're trying to do. Breakfast closes in 20 minutes, everybody. Yes. Oh my gosh. I am so excited. Thank you so much, aardwolf, for being there at this perfect time. In love. I am in love. Every hyena. I am a fool head over heels for them. It seemed like it maybe went on a little scouting mission cuz it kind of walked along that almost the whole of that open area behind it. And then eventually just sat here.
It's actually sitting on a game path or close to a game path. It's maybe just been a scouting mission. Maybe this is actually not where it normally hangs out. It's coming from another place. Conservation isn't just about protecting animals. It's also about securing its future. Now, Leander and I were very fortunate to witness a rare fertility procedure here in Mabula, getting a special glimpse at the behind the scenes. So, I'm walking out in the open at the moment. You might have wondered why you didn't see us for the last half an hour of this morning's drive.
Let me show you why. Look at this. Over here, we're monitoring her vitals. They're taking some blood samples. And we're going on this side. They're putting a back horn chip. Here's Leander, wishing he did more weights so he could be as strong like him, Paul. We have Queen and the two cubs. I haven't seen them yet, so this is so exciting for me. Look at that mantle. And they look so dark because their spots are closer together.
The cubs are up a tree. I find it is amazing to just listen to them communicate. What are they saying? Is she encouraging them that they can come down? She's saying you can't come down. Just do it, little cheetah cub." What are you doing up there? I told you not to go up there. Oh, well done, little guy. Well done. Now, your sibling has seen that you can be successful doing it like this. Oh my goodness.
I have never had a cheetah cub sighting like this before, ever. One of the simple pleasures about being out on safari is ending the day with dinner under the stars and the warmth of the boma. I think this is my favorite night when we're at Mabula. It's boma night, which means that we get to eat in this beautiful place. Hello. Hi. I love that. Now, it's time for food, the most important thing about boma night. We've had an amazing start. Well, our intention this morning was to come out and try and see if we can find the black dam pride. And luckily, day two, we've
managed to find them. Or at least a portion of them. They might have been eating something over the past few days. That is a pretty big full belly. They're not in a rush to go anywhere. They're looking pretty comfortable in the grass here. It's amazing how camouflaged they are. So, we just got to keep our fingers crossed and see if we can't find maybe a rare sighting of the Pusing worry. It looks like they've either been doing a lot of moving around last night. This is like perfect conditions for them to move around. I don't think they'll stay here the whole morning. It doesn't look like their intention is to meet up
with the rest of the pride as well. They don't always spend all their time together. Particularly the males. The males are often either on their own or completely separated. But yeah, we haven't even seen the sun come up yet. We're waiting for it to warm us up. Maybe once the sun does come up and warm us up and warm the lions up, that'll give them another spring in their step to continue moving. It's always exciting when lions are moving around because anything can happen. You talk about rare um rare sightings when lions are moving around, they can either go into hunting mode if they see an opportunity, which is
not so common. I mean, you sometimes see them getting excited, but if they get into a hunting mode and stalk and maybe if we're very lucky Oop, a little head up. This is just proves that when they are down and looking like they are fast asleep, they are always listening. Sandringham offered us the exact kind of peaceful winter safari that reminded us that slowing down is just as rewarding. Didn't take us long. Did a short little walk around and managed to find these four lionesses from the Black Dam pride and the two Shikukutsa males, which is epic. But they are starting to look a little bit restless. These lions haven't moved
very far from the moment we found them this morning at what was it, like 6:30? From the quick look though, it looked like they were four younger females, not real adult females in this little group. I wonder if these two males didn't just kind of join up and then find these four females walking around. They are looking like they're getting to the age where they might be starting to come into estrus. And these males really be keen to try and see if they could mate with them. The other male was here as well. I don't know where he's gone off to. He might have just moved up to the right. We are sitting in a beautiful scene and a beautiful giraffe with What a scene. What a way to start the day.
Let's hope it brings some luck. Look at that haze of the smoke. It's just such a eerie beautiful feeling. It's a slightly different sunrise to what we normally have. They all are standing and beautiful at this time of the year. But that effect in the background is just too good. Beautiful big male as they're just moving around. I'm sure he's just uh anticipating the sun to come and get higher in the sky and warm him up as well. Although with such a big body, it takes a long time for that to get really cold. On the contrary, it also takes time for it to warm up. So, We nearly drove into this guy. I mean, we both gave each other a little bit of a fright. And then I reversed out and we are in
such a beautiful spot. We're on the banks of the river. He's a so [clears throat] pretty intent on walking down the road. I've kind of pulled off to the side, given him some space. And if we are very lucky, he may come and walk right past us. It's amazing when they come up so close like this. Really showing off, dust bathing himself, giving us a bit of a dust bath as well. The Sabi Sand rounded off the past few days with some lovely moments, proving once again that it is often the little things that make a safari so memorable.
A nice herd of elephants that's just come down to a Chitwa Dam for their afternoon sundowner. Nice female on the left-hand side, beautiful female, lovely tusks on her. Elephants at Chitwa Dam definitely quite iconic, so nice to see this once again. Always good. And you usually have winter times. Look, there's still a lot of water around because of our big rains that we've had uh in our last summer um season. But this is supposed to be quite a dry, you know, time of the year um with normal rainfall in summer, but because of the large rainfall in summer, there's a lot of water that's uh sitting in lands and in the pans and little you know dams in it. So,
it hasn't been as uh busy as uh usual. But, how nice is it just to get these elephants once again just coming down to Chitwa Dam and coming for a good old drink for the afternoon. Trish, I found your favorite animal. I found a chameleon, a flap-neck chameleon. Wow, in the middle of winter. Can you believe it? You would think the middle of winter you will not be seeing these little animals around. But, this one is keeping very still here on a green thorn or torchwood tree.
Hello, little one. Interesting forehead, don't you think? Maybe we just haven't seen a chameleon at this angle. Yeah. Very interesting like pattern on top. Almost looks like a leaf. Maybe that's another way just to blend in with its uh surroundings. I'm making a leaf here. All right, guys. You're absolutely quite a development here. We got wild dogs on top of Chitwa Dam wall. They just chased an impala into the dam and the crocodile took the impala. And the crocodile just took the poor impala. Two bites. So, both crocodiles took this impala while these wild dogs chased this impala into the dam.
Oh my word. Uh Kathy Lee here, but I'm sad for the poor dogs as I said. They chased the impala into the dam and uh well, these crocodiles were just there at the right place at the right time uh grabbing that uh impala. Uh they're just watching and as I and they know they can't do anything about it at this point of time. So, I just wait. From extraordinary conservation work to unforgettable wildlife encounters and of course the people who make it all possible. It's been another incredible week in the bush. Thank you for joining us on Safari Plus. We'll see you again next time.
