April 9, 2011
Cheetah in Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, South Africa

Today, we moved from the Twee Rivieren area of Kalahari Gemsbok National Park, South Africa, to the Mata Mata area where we would spend two nights. I love the Mata Mata region for its remoteness and the more open terrain which is better for photography — usually. This year, the park, and all of South Africa for that matter, received more rain than usual. So, instead of very low grass and scattered low bushes near Mata Mata, there was a sea of 2.5-3 ft (75-90cm) high grass. It provided some unique photographic opportunities but prevented many others. The grass provided too much cover for the smaller animals and sometimes even blocked our view of the larger animals.

Today was especially good for cheetah. We stopped at a cheetah jam on our way from Twee Rivieren to Mata Mata. We couldn't see anything, and the person we asked said there was a reported cheetah at a sprinbok kill, but they hadn't seen it. Some people were apparently photographing it, so we waited and waited, then finally moved to where one woman had been photographing it. She had been standing up through the sunroof of her vehicle to photograph it, and we couldn't see anything from our much lower vantage point. We waited, and I could hear the sound of bones being crunched — the cheetah must have been close. Finally, we asked another vehicle that was likely able to see the cheetah by standing up through their sunroof, and they confirmed that the cheetah was in fact at the base of the tree where I could hear the chomping noises. Shortly after that, the cheetah sat up and we could see that it was collared. :( We watched for a while and Jan took a few images before we moved on. After checking into our accommodations at Mata Mata, we went out for an afternoon game drive. It was quite slow due to the high grass — until we were headed back towards camp and spotted one, then two, cheetah walking fairly close to the road through the tall grass. At first their heads were mostly dark patches until they walked through some shorter grass and we could see their whole head. We followed them as they continued to walk in the same general direction as the road, and were able to get some nice images as they came closer and closer.