“What’s underneath her?” we whispered to Mzi, our guide, as we squinted in the setting sun behind a female cheetah, Naledi.
“That’s… cubs!” he whispered back in shock.
In the freezing cold of a typical winter’s day in the Karoo, we set out on foot with Mzi, one of Samara Karoo’s finest guides, to track cheetah on foot. The sun was slowly starting to set and another cold front beckoned on the horizon. In the Karoo, those cold front winds pummel the flat landscape with thick, dark clouds rolling in from the coast. Nevertheless, the afternoon was still and the sun had yet to dip behind the mountain.
It didn’t take long to locate Naledi’s signal on the telemetry but it did dip in and out frequently. Mzi assumed she might have settled into a drainage line, so we continued deeper into the open plain seeking a stronger signal. The evening before we had located Naledi shortly after she had killed a springbok and ate it mere metres away from us, so he was sure she would be close.
This is the beauty of exploring the Karoo on foot: you become a part of the landscape, watching each step you tread, noticing each breath you take to blend into the land. It’s also an enormous testament to Samara’s ethical guiding that walking safaris like this can be enjoyed in close proximity to the animals without disturbing their natural, wild behaviour.
Soon after we set out we located Naledi just as Mzi had predicted - in a drainage line. She gave no hints of discomfort so we sat a while watching her rest and hoping that she would soon decide to walk in the direction of the setting sun and the magnificent colours that paint the Karoo sky. Instead she started making soft contact calls. None of us could figure out who she might be calling until she rose ever so slightly and revealed three tiny bundles of fur underneath her belly.
The cubs were no more than a day old and tumbled around helplessly as she groomed and kept them close to her body. What an incredible privilege to be allowed near a cheetah with such young cubs and to be trusted that we would respect her. Tears rolled down my cheeks as it dawned on me that we had witnessed this once-in-a-lifetime moment.
We left her in peace and slowly walked back to the vehicle, all stunned into silence. No one had realised she was pregnant and now Samara Karoo had three new cubs from Naledi and her own mother, Chilli’s, newly born cubs.
Just over a year later we decided to return to Samara Karoo in search of Naledi and her now adult cubs. During this time, Chilli unfortunately passed away, but something even more special happened: Naledi adopted her own mother’s cubs and raised them as her own.
On one particularly memorable bush walk with our guide Roelof and tracker Rowan, Naledi appeared on an open plain with a blood stained face. One by one, her cubs followed in the long golden grass, settled down and groomed each other with the same gentleness we had witnessed when they were a mere day old. She had successfully raised two sets of cubs to adulthood, a beautiful testament to Samara Karoo’s conservation ethos and their contribution to wild cheetah conservation in South Africa.
Samara Karoo’s extraordinary vision of rewilding the Karoo has left me inspired and so in love with this unique and stunning landscape. Once again, wildlife that had previously been extirpated now roamed the plains and mountains of this region. And there’s simply no better way to explore it than on foot and to share in the knowledge and stories of Samara Karoo’s expert guides and trackers.
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